Tag Archive - J. P. Gabler

Is Systematic Theology Necessary?

August 27, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 65 Comments

A reader writes,

I continue to wonder, as I have for a while, if you see a place for systematic theology, perhaps in a dialectic relationship with biblical studies or narrative theology or “praxis critique” or something else. Is there a sense in which it is, at some point, helpful to move from particular (narrative)to general (theological ideas or conceptualizations) as long as there is a move back to the particular for continued revision and critique? Or should we try to refrain from stating theological “principles” altogether? –Wondering in Minnesota

Dear Wondering,

I begin with a little history. Once upon a time there was a scholar who set up biblical scholarship to fail as a theological enterprise. His name was Johann Philipp Gabler. He gave a lecture in the late 1700s entitled, “On the Correct Distinction Between Dogmatic and Biblical Theology and the Right Definition of Their Goals.”

In this lecture he laid out clearly and distinctly the incorrect distinction between and goals of each of these disciplines.

The notion of “theology” with which he was working was one in which true theology is timeless nuggets of eternal truth. These, he said, would be as it were surgically extracted from the text and handed over to the systematicians, who would arrange them for us in a nice, neat, and completed puzzle.

As I say, this is exactly what biblical theology is not. Biblical theology is always the theology that is embedded in, and finds its meaning from, narrative.

And any truly Christian theology will be a biblical theology.

So do I think that principles and systematized theology is a needful thing? No.

Having said that, however, I will add this: there are places in our world where people engage in philosophy, for example. So it may be well and good for a Christian to engage in that sort of task as a Christian, and attempt to write about principles of truth from a Christian perspective.

However, this has no more inherent necessity or value than someone attempting to write a good novel from a Christian perspective or someone attempting to make a good movie that embeds a Christian perspective on the world.

Each might be good things to do at a given time and place, depending on where a person finds oneself and what one’s gifts and passions and callings and wirings demand. You might be a “principles” person, and those might work for you. That’s fine. But someone else might appeal to the novel Children of God or the greatest Christian film ever, Ladykillers, and those appeals would be of no less value, and carry no less Christian connotative freight.

I hope this answers your question, and that you take some time today to listen to the song that bears the name of your great state. It truly is a beautiful thing.

Peace,
jrdk

What is the Bible and What Are We Supposed to Do With It?

March 19, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 21 Comments

In yesterday’s post I made reference to a thousand years without doctrinal statements. What I was referring to was the ways that Jewish theological reflection is demonstrated to us in the Old Testament and the ways that it is shown to us in the New. For all the things that we can and cannot say about the Bible, and for all the difficulties inherent in trying even to talk about “the Bible” as a singular entity, some labels clearly do not fit and this is significant.

One, the Bible is not a guide to living. Yes, there are rules and instructions, but that’s not what the Bible is. Yes, we are to apply much of the wisdom it contains to our lives, but even its commands are tied to particular people in particular moments. Meat sacrificed to idols? Not a big deal (Paul)? Or damnable offense (everyone else)?

Two, the Bible is not a work of doctrine or systematic theology. Yes, it does contain theological claims. But how are those claims expressed and what does that tell us about what we should be doing with the Bible?

One route has proven to be a dead end, and I’d suggest it must inherently be seen as a dead end because it depends on a mistaken idea of what the Bible is. The idea promoted by J. P. Gabler in his famous “Oration on the Proper Distinction between Biblical and Dogmatic Theology and the Specific Objectives of Each” is that the task of Biblical theology is to distill the timeless truths from the Biblical texts and hand these to the theologians to order into their proper logical sequence and results.

This is a bad idea on several grounds.

First, it presumes that the point of biblical theology is to create something else. Yesterday I voiced some hesitation about the idea that we should see systematic-type theology as an inherent product of Christianity. That presupposition has been too often accepted without question. In fact, the Bible is neither a systematic theology nor a refrigerator full of ingredients placed there for the purpose of being made into a theological cake.

The true end of Biblical theology should be to articulate a theology that corresponds to the historical and narratival dynamics that make theology biblical. In Biblical theology, God must always be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God and Father who raised Jesus from the dead. God need be neither of those things in systematic theology, where timeless truths are the order of the day.

Gabler plays into the mistake that in order to be “true” something must be “timeless”. The abstracted is therefore to be prized as the “goal” of such investigations. But again, what the Bible actually is argues strongly against such an idea. We have stories of Jesus–told four times over without any concern for distilling a timeless truth from it. No, it seems in fact that biblical theological reflection moves in much the opposite direction–recontextualizing the message in order to show how it is true rather than decontextualizing it.

What is the Bible? I am committed to a generally narratival shape to scripture: it is a dynamic story that moves from creation and fall through Israel’s story of patriarchs and law and judges and kings and exile and failed return and messiah and church and return. I am committed to this, not because I think it is a problem-free story that runs easily from start to finish, but because even where we find theology and instruction and wisdom and law it is all deeply shaped by the moment of the story within which it is found.

The whole points in one direction: the Bible is storied. Therefore, our calling is to tell the story well so that we learn to live and love and worship well within the narrative that determines our identity.

The question I’m perennially wrestling with is this: is there a way to do theology that will conduce to faithful living? Is there a storied theology that can succeed in drawing people along the way of the cross, a way to express theological commitment that would never, for example, allow someone to claim the church’s blessing on a vision that said, “By this cross you will conquer”?

To be continued…