So I might have been a little over the top by saying that this month’s Christianity Today has as its mini-theme, “Doctrine Good. Stories Bad.” That particular articulation is most characteristic of the Packer and Parrett section. But the cover story created its own set of problems as well.
In “The Mind Under Grace,” Darren C. Marks talks through how modern Christian assessments of our walk with God are thin, pagan, even Buddhist-like, due to the fact that we have not allowed our thought to be corralled by good doctrine and theology. Too much like Schleiermacher, the father of modern Liberalism, we simply pursue spiritual experiences, and see Jesus as the means to such a meaningful engagement.
Marks makes a number of interesting claims, such as “Doctrine is wisdom that helps us clarify our mission.” There’s a sense in which this is undoubtedly correct–and usually problematic.
The churches that take their doctrine most seriously come to understand that at the heart of their mission is–purifying and perpetuating the church’s doctrine! Whatever becomes our interpretive key for reading the world becomes the identity marker for determining our own fidelity. Doctrine will never push us beyond itself, because it is an inherently self-perpetuating enterprise.
Marks makes a good run at showing where Schleiermacher led Christianity astray and where we might find ourselves walking similar paths. Much of this is commendable. But here’s where I think his argument begins to run aground: “Schleiermacher led us astray by proposing that we interrogate theological ideas rather than allow ourselves to be interrogated by them” (25). This creates a false distinction between subjectivity and theology. It under-appreciates the inherently subjective, contextualized, and cultural nature of all theological reflection.
Because Marks is right about the dangers of subjectivity, he is wrong about theology as the answer. Theology, experience, Bible reading, and myriad other factors all walk along in dialogue in the production of godly Christian communities.
Why does this article make me nervous? Mostly because the people who are most sure about their theology also end up being the least pious and destructive in their wielding of it. Here’s the good and the bad all wrapped up into one: “at its best, Christian theology has never understood itself to be merely a human reflection on contingent truths.” And, I would add, at its worst.
It’s the humility of recognizing that all Christian theology is human reflection, and that all truths of scripture are expressed by contingent means into contingent circumstances, that keeps Christian theology living and active, a partner with the church in the on-going task of not only theological reflection but also living into a mission in which we are called to be contingent expressions of the gospel into the myriad contingencies in which we find ourselves.
Doctrine good, subjectivity bad? No. The church as subject indwelt by the Spirit, engaging the expressions of this subject from the past, while striving to be faithful subject in its present, lives into the cruciform narrative that is its own genuine, faithful subjectivity.
A trend I’m finding in these posts is taking the most heinous offenders to be accurate representative samples. Yes, church’s that take their doctrine the MOST seriously probably do wield it the least piously, but this is no reason to neglect doctrine or reduce it to a simply self-perpetuating enterprise. I’m waiting to hear you speak about doctrine in a positive and constructive way, rather than reactionary and fearful ways. I think I’m with you that doctrine happens on the human side of the God-human divide, that it ought to be held only as a provisional interpretive key for faithful readings of Scripture, that it is, yes, subjective. But it is a necessary subjective response to the reality of the gospel (sure, narratively rather than abstractly/doctrinally understood) which objectively confronts the church. If the church were doctrinally silent it would prove that it was not allowing the deep meaning of the narrative in which God confronts us to radically redetermine all of our thinking, since we (at least in the Western church) are inherently concept mapping beings. This seems to me to be the very real danger that Christianity Today (having not seen the issue) is responding against.
You are probably right to react as you do to the call to absolutize doctrine in its interrogation of us – yes, our doctrine must be interrogated by Scripture through which speak the living voice of God. But your ongoing campaign to establish the privilege and priority of the biblical narrative over theological tradition (which I totally support, by the way) leaves you in danger of reacting against one imbalance with another. I would love to see a post or a small series from you on what you think is the proper nature, function, and place amongst other spiritual disciplines of Christian doctrine.
What? You want me to do something constructive?! *sigh*
In all seriousness, my complaints about such theology are so extensive and unnuanced largely because they fit within a conceptual framework of what Christianity is that I think needs to be blown up. In part, this is our tendency to see Christianity that’s more tied to orthodoxy than orthopraxy. It’s one thing to say that these things are inseparable, but quite another to try to show that, historically, orthodoxy has led to orthopraxy. It hasn’t.
As a biblical scholar, that framework of a theologically correct Christianity is problematic on several grounds. First, it has led to a use of the Bible that both claims and acts like the purpose of the Bible is to give us materials for building a different kind of building altogether. This mistake was classically articulated in J. P. Gabler’s “An Oration on the Proper Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology and the Specific Objectives of Each.” The idea being that biblical theology is the distilled, transhistorical truths one can find embedded in the biblical texts.
Then, with this sort of idea in place, the reconstructed theological edifice turns on its maker, silencing its voice. I know this sounds a bit over the top, but the perennial struggle faced in NT scholarship is that theology, even good theology, makes people bad readers of texts. Calvinism makes people bad readers of Hebrews. Arminianism makes people bad readers of Acts-Paul. High Christology makes people bad readers of the Synoptic Gospels. Etc.
Why do I react against doctrine in negative and fearful ways? Because it has too often in the history of the church and the stories of myself and people around me been wielded as a weapon to silence not only human questioners but the Bible itself. The behaviors it produces lead me to believe that doctrine within the framework articulated above has inherent problems. It marks out acceptable space, and then our activity becomes defending and guarding that space. “The first and great command is to protect the theology of the Lord your God with all your heart…”
Somebody asked yesterday about faith statements people are required to sign off on to work at a particular place. I’m in such an institution! How does the statement of faith function in my reading of the Bible? In my reading of the Bible, it has no function whatsoever. However, having read the Bible I keep coming back to the Statement and saying, Yes, this is faithful to what I see being taught in the pages of scripture and/or a healthy trajectory for the church to follow after reading such pages in later contexts.
I’ll ponder your suggestion in your heart. I think it would be a good discipline for me to articulate the proper nature, function, and place of doctrine.
Thanks for your challenging comment, Adam.
I think I can agree that at least by the time of the WCF the church (at least in certain circles) had gotten into the doctrine making/defending business and, yes, defending those doctrines was job #1. But it didn’t start out that way: Arius and Athanasius were reading the same Bible and it became clear that simply reading it wasn’t enough to avoid serious theological dangers, dangers that threatened the reception of the Gospel as God’s self-giving love. There arose a perception of a legitimate need to ‘mark out acceptable space.’ Surely this is a legitimate enterprise, as long as it isn’t seen as coextensive with actually being a Christian, which I can fully agree it has become for some (maybe even for many).
I can fully agree that the history of doctrine from that point (Nicea) on has been a struggle, that concern for orthodoxy has not and cannot claim to automatically lead to orthopraxy,, and I’ll even grant that certain problems within the ongoing historical struggle might stem from a ‘Constantinian’ enforcement of doctrinal uniformity modelled in Nicea itself, but at the end of the day I don’t see a church without doctrine being even possible.
Doctrine doesn’t have to be, shouldn’t be the chief concern of the church, but it should be A concern, a serious concern – we should want to get our doctrine as right as possible, and perceptions like yours that the church has often gotten it wrong in the past, maybe even way wrong, is a helpful part of that process.
But simply blowing something up isn’t very helpful – you remove one demon leaving a whole seven demons are likely to fill. What are the options? Scripture cannot be read in a vacuum. When we pretend it can be we have no ability to respond to Arius (or the JW’s that keep coming by my house) because he’s got the same Bible I do, he’s just got bad Christology, the answer to which isn’t no Christology, its good Christology.
Thank you for your thankfulness and challenging counter comments. I really would love to see a constructive ‘Kirk on Doctrine’ series.
If I can briefly address some of your practical concerns: it’s important to realize what you do and don’t have when talking to the JWs or Arians. What you have is a church tradition of reading the Bible in a certain way. I think that’s important to realize: they are bringing to your door an alternate church’s alternate construal of those same texts. Do you really have a divine Christ in the text to show to the JW just because it’s what the creed confesses? Maybe realizing this distance helps us understand the true ground on which the debate is going to take place. Might that lead to a more productive conversation? To say, “Doctrine teaches me Jesus is divine” might not leave you with much more than a shouting match with the JW if you’re thinking about sitting down and hashing through the Bible with them.
The church traditions you’re talking about are named through doctrines. The JW’s at my door and I are reading the Bible through different doctrinal perspectives. If I’m not clear about that, the conversation is bound to be muddled. No, doctrine doesn’t teach me that Jesus is divine, Scripture does, but doctrine teaches me to read Scripture in order to hear God’s voice speaking through the proclamation of Jesus in Scripture. That means that my conversation with the JWs has to take place on the doctrinal level.
So, two questions: without any doctrinal pre-commitments, how do you answer the question of why we even read the Bible in the first place? Why should anyone pay so much money to take a class on the New Testament? Without some (doctrinal) conviction of biblical inspiration and authority, are those books so important?
Second, related to the last: do you think seminarians are having their time wasted by having to take systematic theology classes, and I don’t just mean the ones at Westminster Seminar or RTS, but at Fuller?
I think my take on your batch of questions resides somewhere in the realm of: we participate in the ongoing narrative of Christ, which is the narrative of the church. That’s why we should read / study theology: not to figure out where the boundaries are, but to know the trajectories the story has taken and what trajectory we are studying and living in.
By uniting me to Christ, God has united me to the story that began way back in the stories of creation. That’s why I read the Bible. I believe that I’ve come to live within and under it because the crucified messiah is the resurrected Lord over all things.
I’m ok with theology, but I want it to maintain its narratival character as much as possible. If I’m allowed to apply a revisionist narrative hermeneutic, I can even say that the Rule of Faith is my friend, as I’ve been wisely taught.
“I’m ok with theology, but I want it to maintain its narratival character as much as possible”
Here we are in full agreement. And as a theologian, I’m ok with biblical studies, but I want it to maintain its theological character as much as possible.
I wonder what you guys may have thought of the late James McClendon’s 3 vols of ‘systematic theology’ – vol 1 Ethics, Vol 2 Doctrine, Vol 3 Witness
Here’s a theologian very much concerned with orthopraxy intertwined with orthodoxy, narrative and even biography.
From Fuller…
I’m not familiar with McClendon’s work, but I see similar theological tendencies in Karl Barth, T. F. Torrance, Ray Anderson, and John Webster. These guys have shown me that systematic theology is not necessarily about binding Scripture up in a system but allowing the reality of Christ as he approaches us in Scripture to fully reshape our systems of thought and life. (I’m just reading my first book from G. C. Berkouwer and I think I’d put him in the same category.)
Isn’t subjectivity just a little bit bad? I’ll grant that getting doctrine right can become it’s own form of Pelagianism, but the objectivity of the incarnation does challenge our sinful subjectivity…
Beth, I have this impulse welling up inside me to invoke my Barth voice and say something like, “The incarnation puts on display an objective subjectivity” as a defense of the subjective.
I also wonder if there’s a way to move your claim into the narrative of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Incarnation just carries so little theological weight in the NT that I like to have its claims bolstered by other more central components.
But yes, we need a story outside of our own to give us a reference point for whether we’re faithfully living our own stories before the face of God. As I’ll comment in a moment on Adam’s question, the problem I’m wrestling with here is the kind of theology, the kind of thing that counts as “objective.”
Your comment, “end up being the least pious and destructive in their wielding of it,” is so true (at least in my experience). Too often I see the love of doctrine crush creativity. Doctrine becomes a badge of honor to show off to those of us who are simple. I agree that doctrine is good to know, but I’m finding that doctrine hasn’t fostered the love that is required of me to live as a new creation. Paul only claimed to know “Christ and Him crucified.” I mean if anyone had a right to put someone in their place concerning doctrine! Maybe doctrine is like logic in a relationship and if logic is only used the romance is lost. Sometimes it is as simple as I did because I loved.
can’t think about incarnation w/o death and resurrection!
Whew!
A couple quick questions, if I may.
1) Does orthodoxy lead to a lack of orthopraxy (heteropraxy? is that a word?)? In other words, do those “most sure about their theology” necessarily “end up being the least pious and destructive in their wielding of it?” If not, then I can’t help but wonder if you’re barking up the wrong tree, complaining about a symptom rather than the illness.
2) Can there be orthopraxy without orthodoxy?
Thanks for bringing these issues to the fore, I’m glad to think about them some more.
Danny:
Re. (1) Often, yes.
Re. (2) Often, yes. And to some degree, this has to be the case. I’d say some things are needed to act rightly more often than not: acknowledging Jesus’ lordship, for example. But it’s also interesting how little much Confessional ethics has to do with Jesus’ lordship…
Daniel, can you tease out that last statement?
Too often the ethical traditions of the church have gotten so excited about the Decalogue (for example) that they speak as though what we’re supposed to do is tied to a “law” that remains unchanged in substance after the arrival of Jesus. Contrast an ethics of Decalogue-observance with the way Paul argues from the death and resurrection of Jesus (for example) to how Christians should be acting in community.
Thus, for example, the starting point in the Westminster Catechisms is to de-historicize the historical prologue of the Decalogue: “I’m YHWH your God who brought you up out of the Land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” is taken to refer to God being “our God and our redeemer.” Never mind the fact that God defines himself as our redeemer when he is addressed as “The God who justifies the ungodly” “The God who gives life to the dead” “The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Etc.
There are so many stories in both OT and NT which suggest that right theology is neither neccesary nor sufficient for right action. The numerous times in the gospels and acts in which people who have no claim to right theology (Samaritans, Gentiles etc) are held up as examples of good faith and conduct.
That’s a good point. I also wonder about putting too much weight on later confessional stances when I step back and realize that those are developments in the church’s doctrine, not what the NT writers themselves were working with. If Mark didn’t think Jesus was ontologically divine, or even pre-existent, is he in hell?
No Mark isn’t going to hell if he isn’t thinking in those categories (yet) but does that in any way reduce the authority of John’s Gospel which is quite clear on Christ’s pre-existence and divinity? If we can track a legitimate progress of theology within the NT itself, not a revision but a process of clarification, why can this not be extended forward to Nicea and Chalcedon, which are also not revising the NT but clarifying its collective Christological content?
Mattlumpkin: Is this an apologetic for wrong theology? Of course right theology isn’t necessary for obedience, My son’s present inability to write my biography with any depth or comprehensiveness doesn’t keep him from obeying me (his stubbornness does), but if he loves me shouldn’t he increasingly seek to grow in his knowledge of who I am as an expression of that love? I’m fine with putting obedience before doctrine, but I just don’t get all the rhetoric that seems to squelch the pursuit of good theology. Doesn’t wisdom and love for Christ motivate us to seek to avoid such false dichotomies?
Adam,
I like the way you think. The relational analogy with your son is helpful.
However, over the love-motive (which is legitimate, though your son’s ability to know you is in some senses much greater than our ability to know God), I think the more persuasive argument for pursuing good theology is that bad theology can lead to some horribly bad things done by those who think it’s good theology. Good theology is no safety net against bad action.
The notion I would like to squelch is not the pursuit of good theology, but the idea that it is both necessary and sufficient for right action. Thus, it might be given a lower priority.
thank you thank you thank you for this. such a pastoral, sensitive, and much needed critique.