On the connection between theology and sin

When a teacher or Christian leader falls into sin, or is revealed to have sinned, it is reasonable to look at their expressed theology and ask whether there is anything in it that might have led them to be vulnerable.  It is not reasonable - because it is simply logically fallacious - to move directly from 'this person sinned' to 'therefore their theology must be wrong'.  That is just incorrect.  A person can have good theology, in the sense that what they think and say is orthodox and biblical, and still sin.  We all know that, I hope.

There is a discussion to be had over the best way to understand the relationship between sin and temptation, and whether there is perhaps a category for disordered desire that is best understood as neither sin nor temptation, but the result of sinfulness in a different way.  That we all have such disordered desires is evident to anyone who is not self-deceived.  It is not at all evident, to me at least, that there is an obvious and orthodox way to understand and talk about these desires, though there are certainly some ways that are obviously heretical.  It would be foolish in the extreme to judge any serious attempt to understand and express these things purely on the basis of any one exponent's sin.  Let me say it again, this sort of ad hominem argument is fallacious.

That doesn't mean that there isn't a conversation to be had about whether there is a better way to understand and express our fallen state, with all its attendant guilt.  There almost certainly is.  Nor is it to rule out of court the question of whether ideas and beliefs have consequences; of course they do, and so it is sensible to carefully and cautiously ask whether there is a connection between a person's theology and their sin.  But that can't be presumed, and rarely is it as self-evident as some people seem to make out.

I wonder sometimes (and now is one of those times) whether the way some Christians write and speak about others, particularly others who have fallen into sin, is not in itself expressive of disordered desire - not, of course, in the sexual realm.  The good desire to be right twisted into the wrong desire for others to be shown to be wrong.  The joy in seeing people we disagree with cast down.  I am not pointing fingers at anyone in particular.  I am just dismayed by tone; perhaps I am really just dismayed by the internet.

Anyway, all this is apropos of nothing in particular.  Just be careful out there, okay?

Anti-intellectualism

Every now and again, the critique is raised of evangelicalism that it is anti-intellectual.  I think that critique is in some ways fair, and in others not so much.  Here is a little exploration of anti-intellectualism with some thoughts on how we can renew a Christian intellectual culture in our churches.

Firstly, I want to point out that there is a good, justified, and theologically well-founded anti-intellectualism which rests on two distinct grounds.  The first is that God's wisdom is not the wisdom of the world.  "Since, in God's wisdom, the world did not know God through wisdom, God was pleased to save those who believe through the foolishness of what is preached."  The message of the cross contradicts the wisdom of this age; the deep-thinkers of the world stumble over the apparent foolishness on display in the crucified God.  When the Apostle tells us that Christ Jesus "became wisdom from God for us", he is not only establishing where wisdom is, but also telling us where it is not.  Christ became wisdom for us by going to the cross, by demolishing everything that the human intellect would naturally think about God.  This demolition job goes to the foundations of natural thinking about God.  It is not that we mostly had God right, but were surprised by this one thing that he has done.  Christ who becomes wisdom for us in the incarnation and supremely at the cross is in himself and from eternity the Wisdom of God.  The apparent foolishness of the cross goes to the heart of who God is, and the fact that the cross appears foolish to us when in fact it is wisdom which reflects the eternal Life and Being of God is a sound rebuke to human intellect.

The second ground for anti-intellectualism is grace.  I think this is where a lot of evangelical anti-intellectualism comes from.  God doesn't expect us to climb up to him, either morally or intellectually; he comes down to us.  The message of the cross is devastatingly simple.  An infant can begin to understand it.  There are no theology exams for salvation; simply, child-like trust is all that is required.  Wherever an intellectual barrier is erected which seems to threaten the simplicity of the gospel, a certain amount of anti-intellectualism is justified and indeed required.

However, anti-intellectualism is not itself a good thing.  From the fact that God has created us with brains and the ability to engage in more or less complex reasoning, we really ought to assume that he wants us to use them - and why, if we are called to use them in life generally, would we not be expected to use them in understanding God and his works?  In fact already in the Scriptures and then in the Tradition of the church we see plenty of rigorous intellectual work, grappling with the reality of God's revelation, seeking to describe it and trace out its implications.  What puts people off that sort of work in the church?

To an extent in evangelicalism I think it is, as already mentioned, the desire to keep the simple gospel simple.  Fair enough, as far as it goes.  But we do our own faith, and our appeal to outsiders, no favours if we decline to engage in thought about what we believe.  The danger looms of a purely subjective faith - I believe it because I believe it - with so little intellectual content, so little concern to explain what we believe and why, and so little effort to connect this faith to a general view of the world, that it becomes unassailable but also inexplicable.  The gospel is simple, but it is also huge in its claims and its implications, and really the church does need to take up the task of exploring and explaining these.

There is also, if I read things correctly, an unhelpful biblicism at work.  Of course evangelicals are Bible people; that's the whole big idea.  But when the Bible is used as if answers can just be read off the surface of the text, and as if any attempt to reflect more deeply on how those answers join up, whether certain parts of the text might be key for interpreting and applying other parts, whether the text might imply a metaphysical hinterland (and perhaps foreground) - well, then I think we're in trouble.  Holy Scripture doesn't work that way.  If we insist on just sticking to the words and formulations of the Bible, we may well end up in heresy - many heretics have been very keen on the text of Scripture! - but at the least we will miss the depths of what is being portrayed in Scripture.

If we want to avoid anti-intellectualism in our churches and foster a thoughtful theological culture, I think we need to consider a few points.  Firstly, those of us who like theology and read big books for fun need to rein it in.  It is very easy for theology enthusiasts to give the impression that they have graduated from the simple gospel to something more profound.  In reality, there is nothing more profound.  Those who have done the most intellectual work need to be able to speak the language of simple faith in church, even as they hope to guide people deeper into that simple gospel.  Even as we go deeper, it should be very evident that we are going deeper into the same message, and certainly not moving on from it.  And this should be clear not only in what gets said, but where the focus and the enthusiasm are.  I get nervous when people seem more excited about metaphysics than they are about Christ crucified.

Second, the links between the Bible and theology need to be clearly spelt out, and it needs to be absolutely clear that the Bible is in the driving seat.  I have no time for that approach that says you need the Nicene Creed or whatever in order to properly understand the Bible.  Rather, I want to show that the Bible itself teaches Nicene Trinitarianism, because that is how God has revealed himself.  There is a temptation for theologians to scorn those who just want to stick to the Bible; instead, why not help people to see that sticking with the Bible is exactly what we want to do, and that the way to do it is to think through the nature and identity of the God revealed in the Bible?

Finally, we need to be clear that the intellectual work of the church is not intended to make the message of the cross appear wise to the world.  Clever folk who are converted to Christ will need to keep on putting to death their natural wisdom in order to start thinking on the basis of God's wisdom - in order to have the mind of Christ, to think on the basis of Christ in the wisdom which the Spirit displays.  Thinking that starts from Jesus and returns to Jesus, making much of him - that is what we need.

The Theological Task

 A sentence from John Webster that deserves some unpacking:

The primary theological task... is the dedication of intelligence to devout indication and description of Christian verities, whose goodness, once known and loved, dispels anxiety and draws both intellect and affections to satisfaction.

This is from God Without Measure Vol 1, page 100.  In the immediate context, Webster is discussing the doctrine of creation, but the description of the theological task seems to be more generally applicable.  I wanted to try to expand some of the phrases.

The primary theological task...

That immediately indicates that there are also subsidiary or secondary aspects to theology.  Webster mentions polemics and elenctics, both of which might be generally classed as apologetics.  We might add ethics, liturgics, and other branches of theological knowledge.  All these things are important.  They are all part of the theologians job description.  But they are not primary, and they won't be done well if they are allowed to take the primary position.  The primary task is not argumentative but descriptive.

...is the dedication of intelligence...

The theological task is an intellectual endeavour.  In my experience the church does not like this fact.  Intellectual tasks feel elitist.  People like the (biblical!) idea that the gospel is simple enough for anyone; they are less keen on the (biblical!) idea that there are depths in the gospel to stretch the brightest mind.  Theology doesn't always help itself.  It is easy to turn this intellectual endeavour into intellectualism, with accompanying intellectual arrogance.  But it doesn't have to be this way.  Intellectual endeavour is to be in the service of the church.

...to devout indication and description of Christian verities...

The subject and method of theology are dealt with here.  Theology is about Christian verities, the truths which are given in revelation, and the primary job is to indicate and describe these verities.  Because they are objective truths - things that are really real - the first job is simply to point toward them.  This is true of the metaphysical and the historical realities upon which the faith depends.  Theology ought to be very obviously not spinning theories but drawing attention to realities.  A second aspect to this is to describe these realities.  The key thing here is objectivity.  Theology is tied to reality, and therefore it can only follow reality.

...devout...

Just to highlight that one word.  Theology is an intellectual task, but it is also a task to be undertaken with devotion and worship.  This is not just an ideal; it is of the essence of the theological endeavour.  One cannot think right thoughts about God unless one's heart is humbly inclined to worship.

...whose goodness, once known and loved...

The description of Christian truth includes, necessarily, the display of the goodness of this truth.  This is not, or at least not yet, apologetics.  It is not necessarily conscious effort to persuade people to love the truths of the Christian faith.  It is just recognising that unless the goodness and beauty of these truths has been shown, the description of them is not yet complete.  God is goodness and beauty.  You cannot rightly indicate or describe anything about him without describing it in its goodness.

...dispels anxiety and draws both intellect and affections to satisfaction.

Theology seeks to satisfy the mind and the heart, and its task is not complete until the realities which it describes and indicates have taken root and brought out the fruit of delight.  Again, this flows from the subject matter: God is the eternal fountain of goodness and love.  Such a fountain is not accurately described without conveying something of that goodness and love.  Theology can provide genuine satisfaction, not in itself as a description, but insofar as it genuinely points to the source of satisfaction.  Webster's point about dispelling anxiety is important here.  Far too much theology, particularly in this age of cultural pressure on Christian faith, is undertaken from an anxious or defensive stance - it is, in a sense, already apologetics.  The primary task of theology, though, is to be undertaken with a calm attention to the subject matter which rules out anxiety.

The order of doctrine

In principle I don't think too much ought to be read into the order in which doctrines are treated by various authors.  What matters is the conceptual core, the weight put on different doctrines, the organisational structure.  And that cannot be read off a contents page.  Some people, after all, save the best til last.  You have to actually inhabit a person's thought for some time before it becomes possible to discern the central pillar.  So I wouldn't want to give this little thought more weight than it warrants.

Still, it seems to me that order is not wholly insignificant.  Schleiermacher saved the doctrine of the Trinity for the end, and that is revealing.  More recently I've been reading volume 3 of Bavinck's Reformed Dogmatics, and I think it is somewhat significant that he begins his soteriology with a chapter on covenant before moving on to the Person of Christ.  It seems to me that this formal order affects the material content.  Salvation is a matter of a legal structure, and the importance of Christ is that he makes the legal structure work.  I think that is skewed away from the content of the biblical witness.  It is striking as well that the covenant idea is read back, in this stream of Reformed theology, into the Trinitarian foundation of the economy, something which I think ought to make us all uncomfortable.

So, without making too much of it, I think the order of theological presentation can matter.

Epiphany Theology

See earlier posts for Advent theology and Christmas theology, if you fancy working through the church year.

A consciousness of Epiphany should, I think, bring three distinctive emphases to our theology: light, grace, and a sense of awe.

By light I mean this: that though it is surely true that God dwells in total darkness, and that clouds and thick darkness surround him, out of that darkness real light shines.  There is a school of thought that emphasises the darkness, that suggests that because God is so very different from us, and because our language and concepts are so inadequate to describe him, in the end we can only say what God is not.  In some more mystically inclined theologians, this ends with saying that God is nothing: "whoever speaks of God as Nothing speaks of God properly", according to Meister Echkart.  But this will not do.  Epiphany tells us that God shines forth; that in the face of Christ we see the light of the glory of God.  Theology is a positive discipline.  It proceeds in the light of God, to speak of the God who has made himself known.

Then again, Epiphany is a celebration of the fact that God has revealed himself to the Gentiles.  It's a desperate shame that this is neglected.  It is good for those of us who are Gentiles to pause and realise the tremendous grace of God displayed here.  It was not only to Israel, his ancient people, that God revealed himself, but Christ was a light for revelation to the Gentiles.  That revelation and salvation reached even us, who by nature were utterly alien to the covenant and people of God, should cause us to be astonished.  It is good to remember that the reason - the deep reason - behind this revelation is that Christ is too glorious for his ministry to be restricted only to the lost sheep of Israel.  That is to say, if the truth of God reaches us, it is not because we are so great, but because Jesus is so great.  And of course, whether we are Gentiles or Israelites this should drive home the amazing kindness of God, which causes his light to overflow all boundaries and to reach into all nations.  So theology as a discipline must be careful never to take for granted any of its material.  Every doctrine, every glimpse of God's glory and work, must be received in humble gratitude.  This is not confident intellectual system building, but humble reception of that which we could never have grasped if the glory of the Lord had not arisen and shone upon us.

And so the net result should be awe.  Awe that we really see in Christ Jesus the eternal light of the Godhead.  Awe that this light reaches even into our deep and morally culpable darkness.  Awe that true knowledge of God can exist amongst sinners who naturally delight in unknowing.  I have read quite a bit of theology which I have not agreed with, but I have often found it profitable nevertheless when it breathes this spirit of awe before the Lord.  Conversely, sound theology which lacks this sense of awe leaves me cold.  (The same, incidentally, can be said of preaching, of hymnody, of liturgy...)  Let us tremble before him - not only because of the thick darkness, but because of the light which shines through it; not only because of our sin, but because of his grace which overcomes all sin - and set about our theology with humility and awe.

Christmas Theology

Five years ago I wrote a little piece on 'Advent Theology' - mostly trying to make the point that because our theology awaits Christ's final revelation, it is always provisional and subject to correction.  (I said other things too; it's only short, why not read it).

As this year's Advent season begins to fade into Christmas, I want to add something: as well as being Advent theology, all sound theology must be Christmas theology.

Christmas is the time of the baby in the manger, of the Word become flesh.  Christmas is the time of Immanuel, God with us, God as one of us.  Christmas is 'God draws near'; Christmas is 'our God contracted to a span' - not without his continuing to fill heaven and earth, of course!  At Christmas, we see his glory - the glory of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.  Though no-one has ever seen God, the one and only Son has made him known.  Christmas is when God, in a miracle of grace, becomes an object in our history, our space and time, counted amongst us as one body alongside other bodies, to be heard, seen, touched.

Christmas is the miracle of how we come to know God.

(There is another side to this miracle, a subjective component to match this objective - but that will have to wait for Pentecost theology).

So Christmas theology must be confident, restrained, and simple.

Confident, because God has really walked amongst us.  We are not making stuff up, neither are we speculating about God on the basis of some element of human experience, or our understanding of the nature of reality.  We are not constructing a Babel-Tower of philosophy to reach up to God; rather, he came down to us.  It is noteworthy that there is essentially no philosophy, no metaphysics, in Holy Scripture - there is instead witness, witness to what God has said and done in our midst.  Because of Christmas, we stand on solid ground as we theologise.

Restrained, because if God has come to us and shown himself to us, we are not free to seek him elsewhere.  We need not engage in metaphysical speculation, but far more strongly than that: we must not.  If God gives himself to be known, if he tells us that to see Jesus Christ is to see the Father, that it is in the face of Christ that we are to seek and see the glory of God, then we are not at liberty to look around elsewhere.  Christmas, by giving us a real basis for theology, gives us the only legitimate basis for theology.

Simple, in two senses.  In the ordinary everyday sense of the word, simple because the story is simple.  God lay in a manger.  This is a truth a child can understand, and perhaps one of the great virtues of Christmas as an annual celebration is that in invites us to see as a child again.  There is no sophistication here, no complex intellectual scheme.  There is just God, present as one of us.  But as if to contradict that, Christmas theology is also simple in the technical sense.  Simplicity, as an attribute of God, tells us that since God is One, and is not made up of parts, wherever God is and under whatever aspect we consider him, the whole of God is there and the whole of God is implicated.  God is not partly mercy and partly justice, for example, in the way that we might be divided and potentially conflicted.  God is all God.  And so Christmas theology looks to the manger and expects to see - and does see - true and full God in the truly and fully human baby.  Christmas theology tells us that we don't need to worry that we're missing out on some deep and hidden things of God by focussing on the incarnate Word; no, rather the deep and hidden things are right there, mysterious and yet revealed, in Christ Jesus.

A word, briefly, to those who love theology.  I think Christmas theology is a rebuke to us when we get caught up in and enjoy the technical apparatus of theology; when we delight in the complex discussions of Nicene Trinitarianism or Chalcedonian Christology or whatever.  It is noteworthy that many of the greatest theologians are on record as wishing that none of this technical apparatus had to exist; they would have preferred simply to use the language of Holy Scripture to bear witness to Christ.  If the abuses of heretics forced them to construct a technical vocabulary, it was only to safeguard the approach to the manger.  Whilst I think we ought to have a grasp of these things, especially if we are teachers of the faith, let's not delight too much in the technicalities, but get inside the fence which they represent to see God in Christ.  And in particular, let's not make them a fence against simple Christian faith, which is far more value than any of our complex distinctions.  Perhaps for theologians, the chief emphasis of Christmas theology is that we need to bow before the baby - a test of our humility!

Why follow Torrance?

In my previous post I attempted to sketch out T.F. Torrance's approach to theological knowledge.  Here I just want to outline a few reasons why I think this, or something very like it, is a good model for thinking about how to do theology.

1. Christ is central.  It is a sound theological instinct to exalt the Lord Jesus Christ in every aspect of thinking about God, to take every thought captive for obedience to him.  In Torrance's structuring of theological science, Christ is the focus at every level, and indeed he is the link between doxological piety and theological reflection.  He is our assurance that we are dealing with a real, objective truth - he is God in his revelation.  He is the one who ensures that our thoughts do not fly off into ungrounded speculation.  It is all about the Lord Jesus Christ, all the way through.

2. It doesn't leave behind or disparage the pre-conceptual knowledge of God in Christ.  It can be easy for theologians, who have wrestled with 'the Trinitarian grammar', to look down on the 'simple faith' of the average worshipping community, and to regard the piety of the average Christian as something that needs to be supplanted by a refined conceptual apparatus.  There is no supplanting in Torrance; rather, it seems to me, his system rightly puts theological science at the service of doxological piety.  The real knowledge of God, if you like, does not happen only as we progressively ascend the levels of theological purity; it happens on the ground, in praise and worship and preaching and sacrament.  There is no superior knowledge of God open to the theologian; just the same knowledge expressed conceptually.

3. It maintains that we do have real knowledge of God in himself, but that we approach this knowledge through God's revelation.  I think this is key.  In Torrance's stratified model, knowledge of God is not restricted to knowledge of the economy - that is to say, the work of God toward us in creation and redemption.  Rather, through the economy, we are enabled to see and understand something of God's life in himself.  God is not collapsed into his works, but neither is his life separated from his works.  It is the fact that Christ himself is truly God as well as truly man which makes this connection possible.  We see, as we reflect on Christ, the real inner life of God - the processions which stand behind the missions.  But we are not encouraged to speculate about this; we are encouraged to learn about God where God has elected to teach us, in the face of Jesus Christ.

For these three reasons, and probably more, I think Torrance is helpful here, and I'd commend his scheme to anyone.

Theological science, with T.F. Torrance

T.F. Torrance sees theology as a science.  This does not mean that theology proceeds by a method analagous to the natural sciences; for Torrance, the essence of a true science is that it allows the nature of the object being investigated to determine the method of investigation.  A science is radically open to external, objective reality, to the point of allowing that reality to determine the very approach to knowledge.  Theological science, for Torrance, is at one level similar to natural science - it approaches an objective reality and makes enquiry about it - but on another level utterly distinct from natural science - because the nature of the object investigated in theology is unique, and therefore the approach must be unique.

Torrance maintains that the object of theological science is primarily Jesus Christ, 'God in his revelation'.  It is in Christ that God makes himself objective for us, in our human sphere, in our space and time and history.  Theological science, then, must allow Christ to shape its investigations.

Theological knowledge, Torrance maintains, occurs at three levels; he is drawing here on the work of Michael Polanyi.  At the most basic, but also most important, level, God is known in personal experience, through the believer's encounter with Christ and through the liturgical and ecclesial life.  This knowledge of God is not conceptually refined, being rather lived than analysed, but it is profound - the person who encounters God in Christ by the work of the Holy Spirit is caught up in a deep, albeit implicit, knowledge of who God is.  The focus here is Christ, and the awareness of genuinely seeing God in Christ.

Christ remains the focus at the second level.  Here the believer's experience of Christ is analysed and clarified conceptually.  For Torrance, the process of doctrinal development which culminated in the Counicll of Nicaea represents the paradigmatic move to the second level.  Aware that in Christ she encounters God himself, the church moves to conceptualise this knowledge.  The homoousion - the genuine identity in being between Christ and the Father - is central here.  It allows a movement from an informal knowledge that God was at work in Christ to a conceptual understanding of the missions of the Son and the Spirit in the Triune work of redemption.  That is to say, through the homoousion the believer is able to conceptualise the work of the economic Trinity clearly, and what was implicit in the experiential knowledge of the first stage is made explicit; an experiential knowledge of the Trinity becomes a doctrine of the Trinity.

At the third level, further conceptual clarification takes place.  Once again, the homoousion is central and the person of Christ is the focus, but at this level we are driven to understand that it is not simply God in his relations to us that is revealed in Christ, but that if Christ is truly of one being with the Father then we are shown God in himself.  The immanent life of God must be the ultimate foundation of God's work towards us; the processions of the Son and the Holy Spirit are revealed as the ontological ground of the missions in the work of redemption.  A further clarification of our concepts occurs at this level, and indeed a simplification as we move through the works of God to consider their ultimate ground in the very being of God.

Two things are particularly critical for Torrance in this account.  Firstly, Christ is central throughout.  For Torrance, the homoousion is the central commitment of Christian metaphysics.  It is through the genuine oneness of Christ with God the Father that we can be confident that our experience of Christ leads to true knowledge of the real God.  We are not, in the Lord Jesus, having to do with a reality outside of God which may or may not point towards God, but with God himself in his revelation.  It is because of the homoousion that we can move from the evangelical experience of God's presence and work in Christ to the conceptual clarity that is provided by the doctrine of the Trinity, both economic and ultimately immanent.  The homoousion means that we are not speculatively reaching up toward God in our conceptual analysis, but we are (as genuine theological scientists) following the nature of the object presented to us.

Second, the three levels of theological knowledge strengthen and support one another.  They are interrelated through Christ, who is central at every level.  In particular, the 'higher' levels do not leave behind the pre-conceptual, doxological knowledge of God in Christ; in fact, this basic experiential Christianity remains the most important level of theological knowledge and the most profound.  Whatever conceptual clarifications may take place, they cannot displace or undermine the life of faith and the implicit theology expressed in piety and worship.  Perhaps we might say that whilst the third level provides the ultimate conceptual grounding for the other levels, there is a sense in which the first level provides the existential ground for the others.  Ontologically, of course, the ground for all three is the Lord Jesus Christ in his reality as the revelation of God.

I want to unfold some of the implications of this approach in another post.  If you want to dig into Torrance more in the meantime, this little sketch is heavily reliant on 'The stratification of knowledge in the thought of T.F. Torrance' by Benjamin Myers (Scottish Journal of Theology 61(1): 1-15).

Heresy

It is interesting to see how the Covid situation has resurrected the concept of heresy in a secular guise.  I see increasingly strong reactions against anyone who suggests a different interpretation of the information from that offered through official channels.  Indeed, even to question whether HMG's current course of action is wise and humane is enough to get you told that you have blood on your hands - irrespective of whether you have been carefully keeping to the regulations personally!  Why is this?  Because ideas have consequences.  In this case, it is felt that certain ideas will lead to people taking actions which will result in more people losing their lives.

I am not going to dive into the debates around lockdown (not again, anyway).  Rather I wanted to flag that this is a useful illustration of the theological notion of heresy.  Heresy is not just wrong opinion, but the advancement of ideas which are likely to have devastating consequences for individuals and for the church.  Primarily, heresy encourages people to trust wrongly: to put their trust in things that cannot bear that trust, or not to trust those things which they ought to trust.  The Arian heresy encourages people to trust a creature rather than the Creator for salvation.  The Pelagian heresy encourages people to put confidence in their own abilities rather than in God's grace.  And there are consequences.  Only God is able to bear our confidence; only he is trustworthy.  To put the weight of our need on anything else is deadly, eternally deadly, because it prevents us from seeking salvation in the one place where it is available - in God through Christ.

So just as misinformation about Covid could lead to people acting in a way that endangers themselves and others, so misinformation about God could lead to people trusting or failing to trust in a way that imperils themselves and others eternally.

I think the Covid situation does also highlight one of the dangers of the concept of the heresy.  Some of the anti-sceptical folks have reached the point where there are things which are doubtless true, but which may not be said for fear of consequences.  For example, I read an article over the weekend which castigated the lockdown sceptics for talking about the adverse effects of lockdown on mental health.  There was no suggestion that lockdown is not bad for mental health - I don't think that would be plausible - but that whether it is bad or not, one ought not to say so, because of the potential consequences.

In theological circles, sometimes it becomes impossible to ask valid questions, or to explore genuine issues, because they are very quickly linked to heresy.  The heresy flag is waved early in order to halt discussion.  That is not helpful.  There has to be space, even within the most tightly confessional circles, for investigation of theological issues; there has to always be the possibility that even the definition of heresy has to change under the pressure of renewed reading of Scripture.

He has spoken

I'm re-reading a bit of John Owen at the moment (On the true nature of a gospel church - volume XVI of his Works, for those following along at home).  Owen is very definitely of his era: a scholastic theologian, meaning that he pushes for precision in every point and is very careful in his analysis; in particular, he milks the Scriptures for every drop of truth he can see in them, and works hard to bring those truths into relation with one another.  It sometimes makes for tedious reading (okay, okay, John - you've made your point), but I basically like it.  There is something in the scholastic instinct which to my mind honours God, by seeking the coherence of his words and works.  "Fear of scholasticism is the mark of a false prophet", as Barth remarks in CD I/1.

Behind Owen's rigour there lies the conviction that God has spoken, and still speaks through the Scriptures; and therefore whatever question is raised in the church it is to the Scriptures that we ought to turn.

I think we've lost that conviction a little bit, or perhaps a lot depending on what circles you move in.  My guess is that it happened like this, although I freely admit I've made no effort to check whether history maps on to this analysis.

In the olden days (that is to say, the 16th and 17th centuries), the three convictions that (1) God has something to say on all points of Christian doctrine, that (2) it is in principle possible with the aid of the Spirit to hear what he says from Scripture, and that (3) it is our absolute duty to listen to, trust, and obey God in every detail of what he says led to the long confessional documents that characterise that era.  These confessions reflect a belief that God has something clear and certain to say about, for example, the extent of the atonement, the precise mode of church government, the proper administration of baptism (to whom, when and how), even the role of the civil magistrate and the limits of state power.  They are, as I mentioned long documents.

The failure to come to a consensus on many of these points in Protestantism, with the multiplication of church associations and the writing of ever more lengthy doctrinal statements, undermined over time the central convictions.  Of course no Protestant - no Christian! - could easily sell out point 3: we certainly have to hear and obey God in everything he says.  But convictions 1 and 2 begin to waver, or at least to function less vitally in the church: perhaps God has not spoken to every detail, perhaps it is not possible for us to reliably read off every detail of what he has said from Scripture.  Of course some theological positions were never committed to these assumptions - to be an episcopalian, for example, you have to assume that the church is given wide latitude to form its own church government, and that means assuming that God has not given direction on the matter (or at least, that he has not done so in Scripture).

Modern evangelicalism is characterised by, amongst other things, its desire to bring Christians who are committed to the Bible together.  This is often achieved by drawing a dividing line through theological issues, splitting them into primary and secondary.  The aim of this division was not, originally, to undermine the claim that God speaks into all sorts of doctrinal questions; the aim was to clarify which doctrines came so close to the heart of the gospel message that to distort or abandon them was to ruin the church's faith and witness.  Those doctrines are classified as primary.  Others, judged less close to the heart of the matter, were judged secondary.  We can talk and argue about them, but we shouldn't divide over them, at least not completely.  (Everyone accepts that practically it is difficult to run a church without agreeing on, for example, who are the proper subjects of baptism; but congregations which disagree on this could still co-operate in mission organisations and local outreach, for example).

This is helpful and commendable; nobody wants to go back to the divisiveness of early modern confessionalism, I hope.  But I suspect that over time it has undermined further our already wobbly convictions.  If we're working with these people, worshipping with these people, it becomes harder to think that their disagreement with us over 'secondary' issues is a matter of them not hearing properly what God says on the topics in question.  It is easier to say that God has not spoken, or at least that he does not speak clearly, on these subjects.  That gives us latitude to fudge them without any sense of disobedience on our part, or any apprehension that our good co-evangelical friends are disobedient.  But this naturally leads to the idea that these 'secondary issues' don't really matter: if they did, God would speak clearly on them.  So rather than work hard (and scholastically) to hear God, we shrug and let everyone go his own way on these things.

The fundamental problem here is that we have stopped listening to God.  That means, in practice, that we are doing what lies in us to prevent the Lord Jesus from governing his church.  (Thankfully, what lies in us is really not very much).  Out of fear of awkward chats, and a disinclination to work hard, think carefully, and be precise, we have done our best to shut out the voice of God.

But he has spoken, and because he has spoken he is speaking; and no topic is beyond the scope of his sovereign speech.  Might it not be better to try to hear and obey him?  If it leads to us having to acknowledge frankly that we think others, whilst we see them as in many ways faithful brothers and sisters, have failed to hear and obey - would that be the end of the world?  And might it not even be helpful if it exposes us to the same sort of critique from them?  Might we not together expect to hear God speak more clearly as we mutually rebuke and exhort each other?

I hope for a future with more scholasticism in this sense, more rigour, more fiery theological debate between people who acknowledge one another to belong to Christ's faithful.  I hope for a future in which God's word rules God's people.  I hope for a future in which the Lion's roar is heard clearly again.

Our problem

Everything I'm about to write might be completely wrong, and nobody would be more happy about that than me.  But I think I've observed this one big problem with my lot, that is to say evangelical Christians of a relatively conservative persuasion.  The problem is that we misidentify our problem.

Specifically, I think we often assume that our problem is with our borders, and that our centre is sorted.

For example, we assume that we're basically sorted when it comes to Sundays - preaching, worship, that sort of thing - and that the real issue, the thing that is holding us back, is our difficulty with evangelism or apologetics or general engagement with the world.  Or perhaps in the realm of ideas we assume we've basically got a handle on theology, but that we need to work hard at understanding the culture.

Two qualifications.  Firstly, I don't mean that anyone out there is saying, 'hey, I've nailed preaching, no need to work on that anymore'.  But I suspect that most of our work on preaching is basically tinkering.  The same sort of thing, mutatis mutandis, could be said about worship or theology.  Fundamentally we know what we're doing, or at least what we're trying to do.  Second, I don't mean that evangelism and apologetics and cultural engagement aren't important, or that we're doing okay at those things.  They are, and we're not.

But here's the thing.  The church lives from its centre, which is Christ.  In particular, the church lives from the proclaimed word, in which Christ comes to it again and again in the gospel, and draws his people again and again to himself.  That is where the life of the church begins, and begins again and again each Sunday.  Then again, that life of the church flows directly into liturgy, into prayer and praise and adoration.  That is both the immediate outworking of life in Christ and its ultimate goal.  That is the expression of the life of the church.  Then again, theology is the crucial rule of the church, the direction of its life, the mirror in which the church sees itself as a people shaped by union with Christ.

So if there's a problem in the life of the church - specifically, let's say there seems to be a problem with our ability to evangelise the world around us, for that certainly is the great challenge we face and it is a challenge in which we are making remarkably little headway - I would suggest that we ought not to immediately look to the presenting problem, but to the centre.  Is the life of Christ evident in the church?

Practically, do we really know what we intend to do when we stand up to preach a sermon, or sit down to listen to one?  Are we sure?  If we are sure, why is so much of our preaching tediously didactic, or dully sentimental?  Where is the power?  Why do we find the sermon over-long when we sit to listen?  Why are we glancing at our watches all the time?

Practically, is our worship an expression of Spirit-fuelled joy, as the Spirit-filled community with Spirit-unveiled faces perceive the glory of Christ?  Do we know what we are doing when we stand up to sing, or sit to pray?  Are we sure?  If we are sure, why have we ended up with so much thin liturgy, so little seriousness?  Why does the joy look more like froth, that evaporates quickly into the air, than deep seated contemplation of the beauty of the Lord?  Where are the holy hands uplifted?

Practically, are we sure we've grasped what theology is all about?  Do we know what we're going about when we seek to read and study or to teach?  Are we sure?  If we are sure, why does so much of our theology seem either totally untethered from what the church of all ages has believed, or alternatively to be a mere repristination of thoughts someone had in the seventeenth century?  Where is the creative engagement with Holy Scripture?  Why is there such impatience with theological questions, the rush to pragmatic solutions, the inability to see the links between different theological loci and practical church life?

Maybe I'm wrong.  But I do wonder whether instead of looking to our borders we ought to be crying out for renewal from the centre.

Dropping Grudem

For pretty much as long as I've been a Christian, Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology has been the standard textbook of conservative evangelical theology.  I have often noted that sadly many people have not taken seriously Grudem's warnings that his book is intended to be introductory (I mean, it's subtitled An introduction to Biblical doctrine, which should be a clue) and have treated it as the final word.  I'm thankful that a wise pastor encouraged me early in my Christian life not to let my theology rest with Grudem but to press on to deeper things.  (That is not to say Grudem wasn't helpful to me - I'm grateful to those who gave me a copy.  It helped me especially to begin to think through positions on baptism, spiritual gifts, Scripture...  But I didn't end up resting with him.)

Anyway, this week Grudem has declared that the building of a border wall in the US is morally good, on the authority of the Bible.  Read the article.

My conclusion from this is that we ought to stop using Grudem's Systematic Theology, or at least demote it from its current position as go-to.

In case you're wondering, this is nothing to do with the politics of the article.  I'm not one of those people who thinks we should boycott people's works because they don't agree with us politically.  I don't even have a very strong opinion about the wall, to be honest.

My concern is for exegesis and theology.

Grudem's argument for the morality of the wall boils down to: the Bible often speaks positively about walls, so building walls is good.  This is of course backed up by a plethora of quotes from Scripture.  But that is all there is to it.

I really don't think this is how the Bible works.  For starters, Scripture does not intend to answer this question, and therefore to read it as if it contained a straightforward answer to a question which it doesn't raise is pretty rash.  It's a flat reading of Scripture, which doesn't seem to recognise that Old Testament references to the walls of Jerusalem can't be crated up, transported over the centuries into a wholly different culture, and then unpacked and used just as they are.

I also don't think it's how theology works.  If we wanted to apply Scripture to this question, we'd have to do more than pile up references to walls from the Bible.  Scripture bears witness to Christ.  That is what it is for: to show us the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.  And then of course that witness has implications for all sorts of areas of life and ethics.  But we would need to do the work.  In what way do those references to walls bear witness to Christ?  They do!  Surely the security of Jerusalem throughout the Old Testament, and the walls which are described as encircling the New Jerusalem in Revelation, are images of the eternal security which the people of God have in Christ.  Well then, we have a fair bit of work to do if we're going to work out what the ethical implications might be for nations in the modern world.

And here's the thing: when you go from this article and look back into Grudem's Systematic Theology, something which I've had cause to do recently, you realise that this is the method throughout.  We need a better textbook.

Advent theology

Recent conversations I've been having with people around the merits (or demerits) of classical theism have driven home to me again that theology, like everything the church is called to do, is an advent discipline, which is to say, it's grounded, provisional, and eschatological.

Theology is grounded because it is based in the original advent of Christ.  We in the church have seen something of God, and therefore we must speak.  Because it matters that we speak faithfully - that what we say conforms to what God has revealed - we have theology, a discipline which aims to critique our talk about God so as to achieve that faithfulness.  What that means is that theology is far from being an anything-goes affair.  The real God has really revealed himself, and it matters that when we speak of him our speech reflects his revelation.

Theology is provisional because we live between the times.  We look back to Christ and rejoice in what he has done, but we acknowledge that we still await our redemption.  That means that we have to recognise two things.  One is our own continuing sinfulness and weakness.  Everything that we say is open to critique, and nothing that we say will perfectly express God's being and action.  The other is the movement of history.  Things that were said in the church yesterday cannot just be repeated today as if they definitely still made sense.  Human speech which was faithful to God's revelation yesterday may be unfaithful if simply repeated verbatim today.  It is not as if God has changed!  But in this between-the-times world, nothing stands still for long.  Words change their meaning, cultural resonances shift, philosophies rise and fall.  We must speak today, knowing that the church of tomorrow must speak again and afresh.

Theology is eschatological because we look forward to seeing Christ.  On that day, theology will become defunct, as we will know even as we are known.  Or, to put it another way, the human discipline of theology will give way to the divine theology, which will once and for all correct our faulty notions and purify and complete our stumbling efforts to speak.  Faithful theology looks forward to its own dismissal, its service done and no longer required.  The goal, after all, never was theology as a discipline, but knowledge of God as a relational reality.

The disaster of untheology

I offer without particular comment this, from Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics I/1, p 77.  Paragraph breaks added and punctuation slightly altered for ease of reading.  Not difficult to apply to the present life of the Church despite the passage of 85 years...

How disastrously the Church must misunderstand itself if, on whatever pretext, it can dream of being able to undertake and achieve anything serious in what are undoubtedly important fields of liturgical reform or social work or Christian education or the ordering of its relation to state and society or ecumenical understanding, without at the same time doing what is necessary and possible with reference to the obvious centre of its life, as though it were self-evident, as though we could confidently count on it, that evangelium pure docetur et recte administrantur sacramenta!  [the gospel is purely preached and the sacraments rightly administered - the reference is to the Augsburg Confession.]  As though we could confidently leave this to God and in the meantime busy ourselves with the periphery of the Church circle, which has perhaps been rotating for long enough around a false centre!  As though we could put ourselves in God's hands without a care in the world for what happens at this decisive point!

Again, how disastrously the Church must misunderstand itself if it can imagine that theology is the business of a few theoreticians who are specially appointed for the purpose, to whom the rest, as hearty practical men, may sometimes listen with half an ear, though for their own part they boast of living "quite untheologically" for the demands of the day ("love").  As though these practical men were not continually preaching and speaking and writing, and were not genuinely questioned as to the rightness of their activity in this regard!  As though there were anything more practical than giving this question its head, which means doing the work of theology and dogmatics!

Again, how disastrously the Church must misunderstand itself if it can imagine that theological reflection is a matter for quiet situations and periods that suit and invite contemplation, a kind of peace-time luxury for which we are not only permitted but even commanded to find no time should things become really serious and exciting!  As though there could be any more serious task for a Church under assault from without than that of consolidating itself within, which means doing theological work!  As though the venture of proclamation did not mean that the Church permanently finds itself in an emergency!  As though theology could be done properly without reference to this constant emergency!

Let there be no mistake.  Because of these distorted ideas about theology, and dogmatics in particular, there arises and persists in the life of the Church a lasting and growing deficit for which we cannot expect those particularly active in this function to supply the needed balance.  The whole Church must want a serious theology if it is to have a serious theology.

Reading dead theologians

I believe in the communion of saints, and one of the big things that means for me is reading.  Via my bookcases, I can enjoy the theological insights and Christian experiences of believers who have gone before me.  The brains of people from every continent and every century of the church are available to me.  (My own bookcases may not actually sport books from every century; I am still collecting!)  But reading dead theologians can be tricky.  Here are a few tips:

1.  If approaching a new dead theologian - that is to say, one you've not read before - try to find out whether they've written something devotional, or at least practical, and read that first.  It's helpful to have a feel for what makes someone tick in terms of their own spirituality before hitting the doctrine.

2.  Do remember that dead theologians are often working in very different intellectual and cultural contexts.  This has lots of effects that need to be borne in mind.  At the nuts and bolts level, there may be technical vocabulary that translates awkwardly (or, if they were writing in English, there may be vocabulary which wasn't technical then but is now, or which was technical but which the writer could assume an understanding of which is no longer current...)  But above and beyond that, there is the philosophical outlook employed, or assumed, or perhaps even being opposed.

3.  As a corollary, don't be too quick to assume you know what the dead theologian means.  Sometimes the words and concepts seem familiar, but the different philosophical climate changes the meaning completely.  Sometimes we import too much from our end of the conversation and assume that the dead theologian must be addressing an issue which we face - an issue which may never have even occurred to them.  Best to read slowly and without jumping to conclusions.

4.  Don't assume that because the dead theologian was right to say such-and-such then, that we ought to say the same now.  There may be specific reasons why they expressed themselves in that particular way, and it may have been not only necessary but also best to say exactly that in exactly that way.  But perhaps outside of that particular controversy,or when working within a completely different philosophical paradigm, or in a different ecclesiastical context, it would be better to say it differently, or leave it un-said.

5.  Vice versa, don't assume that just because you wouldn't say such-and-such now, that the dead theologian was wrong to say it then.  Don't judge those of past ages by our present orthodoxies, or at least don't be too quick to do so.

6.  Don't assume the dead theologian got the question right (or that the question as posed is still relevant).  Sometimes theologians end up with particular answers because they asked particular questions (or particular questions were put to them) - and those may not be the best questions.  They could have been imported from a non-theological framework, or they could have been raised due to a misunderstanding.  The answers may be very fine, but we should not therefore assume they are theological truth unless we have also examined the questions.

And the two big ones...

7.  Don't treat the dead theologian as if they are dead.  In Christ, all these people live, and as living people they still speak through their works.  That means we have to pay attention, as in a conversation, not just use their relics as a springboard for our own thinking.

8.  Do remember that the dead theologian, if he or she was really a theologian, was looking to Christ.  The best thing we can do with their works - the thing they would want us to do with them - is to use them as windows through which we can glimpse him.  And that is the value of reading them.  Because they are far removed from us, their perspective is different, and they will see Christ in ways in which we would never see him left to ourselves.

And it is worth remembering that one day we, with them, will see him - and then all our theological differences will be as nothing.

Incarnational science

Karl Barth spends a few pages at the very beginning of his Church Dogmatics insisting that theology has a right to consider itself to be a science.  Of course he does not mean an experimental science, which is more or less the only definition of science that we have in English.  Nor does he intend that theology should be forced to conform to the norms and methodologies of a general 'science', whatever those might look like.  Theology must do its own thing, but it is (or can be) none the less scientific.

I would suggest that there is one key reason why we should consider theology a science, and that is that it has a definite object.  Theology is not speculative - or at least, in so far as it is speculative, it is bad theology.  Theology is the investigation of a particular object, namely God.  As a discipline, it is bound to this object.  It examines and describes, but it does not invent.

Now God is never merely the object of our investigations; God is never merely an object at all.  Like any other person, God is also subject.  Indeed, as divine Person, God is always subject, and always sovereign subject, in all of his interactions with anything outside himself.  But he gives himself as an object.  He allows himself to be investigated.  He makes himself available as the source and object of theological science.  He does not give himself away - he is very capable, for example, of recalling the errant theologian back to his truth.  He remains the sovereign subject.  But he is also there, there for us to see and investigate and learn.

To put it in theological terms, God in the incarnation has come to us.  Because he was here, as a human being amongst human beings, there is a definite historical referent behind our theological talk.  We cannot just say anything about God, as if he were a mysterious noumena, without shape or form or limit.  God gives himself as object in this particular person at this particular time.  Therefore, he can be known; therefore, there is theology.  Because of Jesus, theology is a science.

The theological method will be decided by its object.  Because its object is God as he gives himself to us in Jesus, its method must be the study and exposition of the witness to Jesus contained in Holy Scripture.  Because its object is the God who establishes the church as his community of witness, its method must be community based.  Because its object is the the God who is also always subject, its method must be driven by prayer and worship.

But it is not speculative or open-ended.

Because of Christmas, theology has definite content, just as the manger of Bethlehem had definite content.

Always learning

I think theological progress (and regress) happens broadly like this.  There is a new and powerful insight into some theological locus, or into the whole scheme of Christian doctrine.  'New and powerful' does not always mean true and helpful, so there will be and should be a debate about whether this insight is in fact an improvement on what has gone before.  Depending on how this debate goes, this new insight may become the new orthodoxy, generally accepted as the best way, or at least a good way, of expressing Christian doctrine in the here and now.  Over time, though, this new orthodoxy becomes brittle.  It is perhaps explained and explained until the kernel of the original insight is lost behind scholastic definitions, or it is defended and defended until the keep of the original insight is almost invisible behind the curtain walls of apologetics.  At that point people start to question, start to look for new insight...  And the cycle begins again.

I see this as a virtuous cycle, if - and only if - at the stage of looking for new insight the church looks to, and determines to be reformed by, the word of God in Holy Scripture.  If it does so, and if individuals within the church who are asking questions are looking to Scripture for answers, there can really be nothing to fear.  The old orthodoxies may have become clouded by time; they may simply have been valid and necessary expressions of the gospel in their context which no longer communicate as they used to.  In that case, the central concerns of the old orthodoxies themselves demand that the schemes and ideas be revisited and questioned.

So, always learning.  The church should not be afraid of doubters and questioners. They have the potential to help us to understand and express the gospel better than we would otherwise.

But there is a worry.  Today we seem to have broken the cycle, or rather we have got stuck in one part of it.  We are questioners and doubters.  The old orthodoxies do not speak to us or to the world around us as they once did.  We long for authenticity, something which does not just repeat the words our forefathers used, but speaks in our voice, addresses our concerns.

So far so good.  But are we going back to Scripture for answers?

I think for many of us the questioning and doubting has come to have value in itself.  We have become convinced that authenticity requires us to be always questioning, always holding opinions lightly, always doubting.  To poke holes in the old orthodoxies has become commendable for its own sake, and those who do it best are applauded.

Always learning, but never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth.

This is a problem of reaction.  The old orthodoxies have become oppressive to us.  For many people, their doubting and questioning is a response to a Christian upbringing which squashed questions, denied doubts, simply asserted the old truths in the old ways.  In the name of authenticity, we cast them off.  This could have been a glorious moment, if only we had gone back to the Word.  If authenticity had been the first word in a conversation which had Jesus Christ as its final word, this could have been a reformation.  But instead authenticity became the first and last word.  Authenticity is certainly a human virtue, but to exalt a human virtue into the place of the word of God is idolatrous.  No surprise that we are left applauding those who, by teaching anti-gospel ethics in the name of authenticity, have subjected themselves to the Scriptural malediction that it would have been better to be weighed down and thrown overboard.

The Serpent's Academy

Have you ever noticed how Genesis 3 reports the founding of the two oldest faculties of the University?  

The first is theology.  The serpent asks the question: "did God actually say..?"  And, I imagine without substantial reflection and without consideration of the consequences, Eve joins in a conversation about God - the first such conversation.  It does not end well.  There is an inherent risk in the pursuit of theology, and a monumental danger.  Talking about God in the absence of God, which is the nature of the conversation in the garden and is the nature of most academic theology today, leads with tragic inevitability to the assertion of my own opinions about God and his nature (I have in mind here the subtle failure of Eve to accurately quote God), which are no match for the enemy's counter-opinions (the serpent's assertion that God is a liar).  My opinions about God may be good, in so far as they go, but unless they are based squarely on God's word - and may I suggest, not God's word as a remembered entity now absent (for the danger of misquoting is too great), but God's word as a present experience - they leave my understanding of God vulnerable to heretical distortion.

The second is ethics.  The serpent suggests that eating from the tree will make human beings "like God, knowing good and evil".  As has often been remarked, this does not mean that Adam and Eve are imagined as having no knowledge of the meaning of these terms; if that were so, the temptation could hardly be appealing.  Rather, the temptation is that they could become like God in being able to discern what is good and what is evil.  And of course, being able to discern this very quickly becomes being able to decide what is good and what is evil.  Here is the launch of ethics as the pursuit of autonomous human beings.  Rather than accepting God's word on the subject - "he has told you, O man, what is good" - human beings seek to work ethics out (and later, to impose their preferences under the cloak of ethics) in God's absence.

What a dangerous place to be the university is!

Whereof we need not speak

Thesis: the basic formal principle of Christian theology and Christian preaching is necessity, or if you like obligation.

I want to explore this in a couple of directions, theological and Biblical.

1. The most basic activity of the church is listening or hearing. The church, and the individual Christian as a member of the church, hears God's Word and is gripped by it, energised by it, given new life by it - not just once, but again and again and again. The church always continues to be hearing. But because the church hears, the church must also speak. It is the nature of the Word that the church hears that it becomes at once the Word that the church must speak and witness to and announce to the world. This is true both because the content of that Word includes a specific commission to speak, and because the Word comes with transformative power that naturally leads to speaking. Hearing necessitates speaking. But if hearing necessitates speaking, it also controls speaking: only what is heard is spoken. When speaking goes beyond hearing, we are outside the range of Christian activity.

2. The book of the prophet Jeremiah most clearly illustrates the point, in the contrast between the false prophets and the true prophet. The Lord's main complaint against the false prophets is not that they are lying - although that comes up! - but that they are speaking without commission: "I did not send them, nor did I command them or speak to them" (14:14). "For who among them has stood in the council of the Lord, to see and to hear his word..? I did not send the prophets, yet they ran; I did not speak to them, yet they prophesied" (23:18-22). By contrast, Jeremiah cannot help but speak (20:9). He has heard God's Word, and he must proclaim it. He is compelled to do so. His commission as a prophet obliges him to speak.

3. The NT is clear that this is what it means to be apostolic: "we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:20); "For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!" (1 Cor 9:16).

This shuts the door to speculation in theology - if we are not forced by the Word of God (which concretely means by the content of Holy Scripture) to speak on a subject, we would do better to remain silent. It also shuts the door to a 'quiet faith' - if we are truly hearing God's Word, we must speak.

A touchstone

I have been turning over and over in my mind the idea that the basic criteria for Christian theology are that it must be all Christ, and that it must give us a view of Christ that includes Christ as creator, Christ as redeemer and Christ as judge. The degree of harmony and unity between the portraits painted of Christ (necessarily there will be three distinct portraits) is a good indicator of how particularly Christian a system of doctrine is.

If I am correct, contemporary evangelicalism has a problem.

For most of us Christ as creator barely features - and certainly bears no particular weight within our doctrinal system. And for many of us, Christ as judge is not recognisably the same person as Christ as redeemer. This has knock-on effects on our theology. On the one hand, the neglect of the doctrine of creation (and therefore also of the care for and enjoyment of creation) amongst evangelicals is massive. On the other hand, it is all too easy to posit a divide in Jesus - the Jesus who wants people to be saved and the Jesus who is rather threateningly waiting to turn up and bring the salvific mission to an end. The result of that is that the second coming becomes bad news, and we end up working against Jesus to save as many as we can before he turns up and ruins everything.

We know God as he is revealed in Christ. That means that the incarnate Christ is also our view of the creator and the judge. There is no other shadowy Christ with contrary aims and a different character. I need to integrate my three portraits of Christ, and thus enrich my worship of the one Lord Jesus.