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A Backpack, Not a Fort: Theology for the Journey of Life

I fear the theological system that has a life and mind of its own.

No theological system ought to be allowed to do the work of exegesis, for example. But they do. In such cases, hard data are not explained, just explained away. Rather than the theologian having a theology, the theology has the theologian. Such systems, rather than being supple and pliable, become omnivorous, as when sometimes a Calvinist theologian explains away the obvious import of biblical verses that propound human freedom, or when Arminian theologians do the same to passages that affirm God’s sovereignty, or when covenantal theologians mistreat dispensations or dispensationalist theologians abuse covenants.

In such cases, the theological system does not take the shape of the data's mold into which they ought to fit. Rather, in what looks like a feeding frenzy of cognitive dissonance, those systems devour every uncomfortable bit of external opposition and evidence. They beat them, grind them, and soften them until they are sufficiently palatable, and then they eat them. Theological systems, if they are not kept perpetually humble, will become incurably expansionistic. Theological systems, if not held in check, if not continually made receptive and teachable, will become imperialistic. They will colonize every fact — compatible or not — that presents itself. Left uncontrolled, they operate like cancer.

The surest sign that a theology is out of control occurs when that theological system itself becomes the theological method, which is the hallmark of Fortress Theology. In such cases, that system usurps many prerogatives not rightly its own. That system not only colonizes biblical exegesis, it becomes its own measure of truth. What does not fit cannot be fact.

If it does not fit and Fortress Theologians want it to fit, they make it fit. I say it fearfully: The worst thing about such theological methods is that they are almost always implemented unwittingly. Few theologians, if any, would either admit to the practice or endorse it. Most theologians, however, if not all, do it — me included. When we do so, we fail.

We must not allow our theology to be turned into a hermeneutic or into the measure of truth. We have things backwards when we make external reality subject to our own particular brand of theology.

In that light, I have not tried to produce a systematic theology as much as I have tried to employ a useful method for theologizing, a method that keeps its eyes and ears open, a method that is, so far as I can keep it so, more suitable for the theological traveler than the theological settler. That method encompasses several elements, of which I mention but three.

Milton the Biblical

First, I like the intense biblicism of John Milton.

When he compiled his De doctrina christiana, he did so by making frequent recourse to the actual words of Scripture. Milton was offended by the theologians he had read who filled their books with their own ideas and crowded their Scripture references out into the margins or down into the footnotes. His own text, he was determined, would be comprised far more largely from the Bible itself. He employed this tactic because he was averse to incorporating any of what he called the "sophistical subtleties," or misleading abstractions, he believed had disfigured theology for many centuries. Insofar as he was able, he tried to ensure that his Christian doctrine was "drawn from the sacred scriptures alone."¹

While I do not believe that he fully succeeded, I am, nevertheless, impressed by his attempt. In his De doctrina christiana. Milton made a recognizable allusion to the Bible more than 9,000 times. One begins to be staggered by Milton's biblicism even more when one recalls that his book was given its final form in his period of blindness, and that he worked from memory.

To say that I admire Milton's attempt to be biblical is not to say that I subscribe either to his views or to his misguided brand of biblicism. Unlike Milton, I do not believe in Arianism, materialism, mortalism or polygamy — positions he thought the Bible upheld. To a great extent, Milton's attempt failed because sometimes his biblicism was of a superficial sort. He was the champion proof-texter. Being truly biblical entails much more than lining up more than 800(!) Bible verses back-to-back, as Milton does when he tries to prove that the Son of God is not God. On that count, I number myself among Milton's detractors.

Unlike some of his detractors, however, I can feel the weight of his arguments and appreciate the grand, even heroic, scale of his effort. I have learned to learn from Milton because even when he is mistaken he is often brilliant. Put succinctly, after reading Milton I am heartened and I am humbled.

I too want to be true to the revelation of God in Scripture, but I know I am liable to error. Error prone as I am, I know that I must not build theological fortresses on ground that, upon divine inspection, proves to be shifting sand. However well I try to prop it up, a fortress built there will crumble. But biblical I must try to be.

Descartes the Skeptical

Second, I like methodological skepticism, somewhat (but only somewhat) after the fashion of Descartes.

By bringing all things before the bar of private judgment and doubt, Descartes was unintentionally acknowledging that it is far easier to be wrong than to be right, and that there are far more ways to be it. In other words, while many paths lead into the woods, normally only one leads all the way through them. That being so, our first response to any alleged road sign must not be to race wildly or unthinkingly to where we imagine it points, but to ask ourselves why we ought to follow this alleged marker at all. As a matter of course, we ought normally to proceed skeptically because, as Vance Havner once said, "It's better to believe a few things for certain than a whole lot of things that ain't so."

Wisdom sometimes dictates that standing still and taking no turn at all is better than taking the wrong one. In other words, making sure of one's marching orders is better than sleep-walking. Some theologians take this advice too far, however, and rather than being careful about where they go and to whom they listen, stop traveling altogether and set up a fort.

About them I have already spoken. Here I simply say that it is better to move circumspectly than precipitously and that we ought to choose our counselors and advisers carefully. Not every well-intentioned hand is actually a helping hand, though perhaps it is meant to be. Of course, I want to be open to help from whatever quarter it comes, but I want to do so in full recognition of the fact that to be carefully skeptical is better than to be piously gullible. Faith must not be confused with an uncritical mind or method. In this regard, philosophy (whether Descartes' or someone else's) can be an exceedingly useful tool. But, like all such evaluative mechanisms, it must be handled with care.

Regarding its usefulness for the Pilgrim Theologian, I want simultaneously to endorse philosophy and to identify its danger. Philosophy, doubtless, is one of the theologian's most serviceable tools, as well as one of his or her most seductive detours. It can help to establish the truth or validity of some of our beliefs, and it can serve to expose errors — both our own and those of others. It can, in short, serve as a point of contact, or means of contact, between the believer and the unbeliever. But, though philosophy can be, it is not always (or even regularly) a preparation for faith. That is because while human beings are capable of reason, because of our raging passions and vested interests we are rarely reasonable. That is why what goes by the name of reason is sometimes not reason at all. What we misidentify as reason is occasionally the source of some of our most blinding error.

That danger notwithstanding, however, right reason is an indispensable means of searching for truth, even though on its own it is probably unable to escape incompleteness even when it does escape error. With right reason as our pedagogue, we can acquire both the skeptical humility and the necessary powers of analysis that teach us to listen carefully to the truth before we venture to speak loudly on its behalf.²

Erasmus the Tolerant

Third, I like the theological tolerance of Erasmus.

Like him, I prefer those who define things too little to those who define them too much. I do this not because I am opposed to mental restraints. I am not.

I am opposed only to those restraints imposed by some of reality's self-proclaimed but deluded proponents.

I know those proponents are, like me, subject both to delusions of grandeur and to the temptation to dogmatize where confident assertion is sometimes neither possible nor right. A thinker like Erasmus understands quite well that the certainties and essentials in theology are few and that the uncertainties and peripherals are many, as unsettled as that might make us feel. Erasmus preferred to find comfort where it could be gotten to manufacturing his own artificial substitutes because he knew that synthetic comfort shelters a theologian not from the cold only, but also from reality. We do better to look at things as they are and not to flinch than to pull our blankets up over our heads. Theologians like Erasmus realize that the restoration of theology is best accomplished by a humble Christian heart searching for truth in a land of theological peace, not by interminable inter-camp warfare.

Theological exploration is a difficult, even dicey, matter at best — one that we must not complicate by constantly shooting at other explorers. Giving aid and comfort and modest advice to fellow travelers is one thing; to treat them like the enemy is another. This is not to say we have no enemies. We do. A lot of us just don't know who they are, and we begin to shoot at anything that moves, or at least that moves in a way different from our own. We have forgotten, apparently, that not only does our enemy move, but so also do our friends and fellow travelers. They could hardly be on a pilgrimage to truth otherwise.

Lisping and Lame

In short, we ought to be biblical, skeptical, objective and tolerant. That is, while we have the record of the very revelation of God in our hands, we must remember it will always be interpreted and applied by our own fallible minds. The Bible itself is infallible and indefectible; we are not. We try to walk and talk according to our Bibles — and we should. But, we are lisping and lame.

C O F F E E  S H O P

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Have you seen people grant more authority to their theological systems than to the Bible?

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To such guides as we have proven ourselves to be, the best response is to be skeptical about what we hear advanced as truth and open-minded and loving toward those who advance it. We ought to listen carefully to what we are told and to evaluate it according to the best workings of our mind and senses. But, in so doing, we ought never to lose our love and appreciation for those whose words and ideas we so carefully scrutinize. That, after all, is what we expect from them.