God, Creation, and Salvation

Studies in Reformed Theology

Oliver D. Crisp, Oliver Crisp

• Publisher: T&T Clark
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780567689535
• eBook ISBN:
  9780567689566
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Teología cristiana

This collection of studies in theology is written from the perspective of one from within the Christian faith, and seeking greater understanding of the doctrinal deposit of that faith. As a leading scholar in Christian and analytic theology, Oliver D. Crisp summarizes and analyses Christian doctrine, written in the form of traditional dogmatics.

Beginning with issues concerning the task of theology, Crisp explores the challenges to systematic theology as a discipline, the uses of Scripture in theological discourse, and the reception of the theology of John Calvin. He then moves issues at the centre of serious theological debate in recent theology, the relationship between God and abstract objects in the thought of Jonathan Edwards, and theological anthropology. This volume culminates with studies that focus on central and defining issues in contemporary systematic and philosophical theology, taking forward a constructive theological program in dialogue with important figures in the Christian tradition, and engaged with some of the best contemporary theological scholarship.

PART ONE

The Task of Theology

1

Challenges for Systematic Theology

Strictly speaking, this chapter is not an essay in systematic theology. It is more of a reflection on some of the pressing challenges facing those practicing systematic theology today—an exploration in meta-theology, if you will. Just as an essay about the perils of writing a novel is not itself a novel, so theological reflection of the sort contained in this chapter is not itself theology (at least, so it seems to me). Nevertheless, I trust that it may be of some use to working theologians and those with an interest in theology, much as a book review in the Los Angeles Review of Books may be of some use to the bibliophile.

But before beginning my rumination, I should register a caveat. The sort of systematic theology I have in view in what follows is theologically realist in nature. By that I mean it is an approach to the theological task that conceives of the object of theological scrutiny (i.e., God, or the divine) as a mind-independent personal entity who is the creator of all things in heaven and earth. There are systematic theologians who repudiate this, usually for one of two possible reasons. The first reason involves denying that God is a mind-independent entity. For such theologians, God is a kind of fictional being generated by human religious reflection and projection. Ludwig Feuerbach is the classic example of a thinker who holds this sort of view, and he has a number of modern theological disciples.¹ A second possible reason involves denying that God is a personal being. There are a variety of reasons why the theologian might espouse this view. But one important historic reason for doing so is attachment to a strong notion of divine transcendence coupled with skepticism about what can be known of the divine nature.

Fascinating though such theological contributions are, I shall have nothing to say about them here. My interest is in theologically realist systematic theology that thinks of God as a personal entity of a sort—even if, as I think, he is a very different sort of entity from anything created.² In order not to burden the text that follows with the cumbersome term “theologically realist systematic theology” I shall simply stipulate that from here on in that when I refer to “systematic theology” it is the theologically realist sort of systematic theology that is in question.

With this made tolerably clear, we may proceed to the question in hand. In my view, the contemporary systematic theologian faces various intellectual challenges that require some reflection in order for her to know how best to proceed with her task. This is the case despite the fact that there are very encouraging indications of the present health and vitality of systematic theology after a period in which its future was sometimes thought to be less than certain, at least in some quarters in the Anglophone world. I think that these signs of renewed health give us grounds for cautious optimism. There are several major multivolume works of systematic theology currently being undertaken by theologians like Sarah Coakley and Katherine Sonderegger;³ there are significant recent and complete systematic contributions to theology from scholars like Thomas Finger, Paul Hinlicky, Robert Jenson, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Kathryn Tanner, Anthony Thistleton, and Brian Gerrish;⁴ and there have been several recent attempts to set forth systems of theology that were never finished, two notable examples being the projected works of the English theologians Colin Gunton and John Webster. I am also aware of other works of systematic theology that are currently in preparation or underway (e.g., the multivolume work that Kevin Vanhoozer intends to write, and the prospective work of my colleague at the University of St. Andrews, Christoph Schwoebel). Yet, despite these encouraging signs of a renewed interest in writing systematic theology, there remain significant obstacles before any contemporary practitioner of this branch of divinity.

In this chapter I will set out what I take to be four of the most serious challenges to the writing of systematic theology today. These comprise worries about the explanatory ambition of systematic theology; about the conceptual content of systematic theology; about the currently fractured state of the field; and concerns about the integrity of systematic theology. Having enumerated and explained them, I will then respond to these worries, providing reasons for thinking that none of these challenges preclude the ongoing task of systematic theology provided the task in view is rightly calibrated so that it has appropriate goals, and is pursued with appropriate sensibilities and intellectual virtues, such as “fallibilism” and “intellectual humility” (terms that I shall explain in due course).

Challenges to the systematic-theological task

The fundamental problem for contemporary systematic theology is that the systematic theologian has the unenviable task of trying to say something practically impossible about something truly ineffable. That is a daunting prospect. What she has to say is practically impossible because in this day and age it really is practically impossible for anyone to write a systematic theology. This problem has to do with what we might call the explanatory amb ition of systematic theology. It is difficult to write a systematic account of anything, especially anything of significance that has generated a convoluted and complex historic literature. (Consider the ambitions of the recent spate of systematic analytic metaphysics, which is an interesting analog to systematic theology in this regard.⁵ ) Yet the systematic theologian has traditionally been tasked with giving a systematic account of Christian doctrine. (At least, that is one fairly traditional way of conceiving the task of systematic theology.⁶ ) Put more formally, it seems to me that much contemporary systematic theology is understood in terms of what I have elsewhere called the SHARED TASK of theology. This can be expressed as follows:

SHARED TASK: Commitment to an intellectual undertaking that involves (though it may not comprise) explicating the conceptual content of the Christian tradition (with the expectation that this is normally done from a position within that tradition, as an adherent of that tradition), using particular religious texts that are part of the Christian tradition, including sacred scripture, as well as human reason, reflection, and praxis (particularly religious practices) as sources for theological judgments.

I think this or something very like it is a way of understanding the systematic-theological task today that is widely (if tacitly) agreed upon, though I won’t defend that claim here.⁷ The problem is not merely that Christian doctrine is a complex web of different ideas and concepts, rooted in a long and diverse intellectual-religious tradition claiming numerous and different sorts of difficult textual material including but not limited to scripture, in multiple languages. It also includes the fact that the literature on the topic is now so vast that not even the most impressive and encyclopedic mind can encompass and assess every individual contribution to the field of systematic theology. Add to that the further difficulty that systematic theologians face in articulating their views on Christian doctrine in a world that is itself much more religiously pluralist and complex than in previous generations, a world where the pace of such change is exponential, and we have a task that is truly practically impossible for any one mere human being. The very idea that one might find an axial point from which to “write the book of the world,” theologically speaking, is now almost universally considered to be a chimera. For some, the very explanatory ambition expressed in SHARED TASK is indicative of the fact that systematic theology is a hangover from a premodern mind-set from which such large-scale conceptual world-building was conceivable (at least in principle) even if it was seldom if ever achieved.

However, this is just the beginning of the systematic theologian’s problems. For not only must she say something practically impossible (the problem of explanatory ambition); she must say something practically impossible about something truly ineffable—a problem about the conceptual content of systematic theology. In the case of systematic theology, it is the object of study that is said to be ineffable—literally beyond the reach of human words. Such high-octane apophaticism is deeply rooted in the Christian tradition. God is said to be both incomprehensible in his essence and ineffable in his being. An example from the ancient liturgy of St. John Chrysostom used by many Orthodox Christians down through the centuries will make the point (and indicate how deeply such thinking has penetrated Christian spirituality). After the recitation of the Nicene faith in the midst of the liturgy, the priest says this:

It is meet and right to hymn thee, to bless thee, to praise thee, to give thanks unto thee, and to worship thee in every place of thy dominion: for thou art God ineffable, inconceivable, invisible, incomprehensible, ever existing and eternally the same, thou and thine Only-begotten Son and thy Holy Spirit.⁸

Similar sentiments are in evidence in other patristic writings, in later medieval school theology, and in post-Reformation Protestant school theology. And it is a matter that is still on the lips of philosophical theologians today. Take the well-known example of Jean-Luc Marion. He worries that any attempt to grasp something of the divine nature, conceptually speaking, must lead to idolatry because God is not graspable by means of theological predication:

Even if we were to comprehend God as such (by naming him in terms of his essence), we would at once be knowing not God as such, but less than God, because we could easily conceive an other still greater than the one we comprehend. For the one we comprehend would always remain less than and below the one we do not comprehend. Incomprehensibility therefore belongs to the formal definition of God, since comprehending him would put him on the same level as a finite mind—ours—, would submit him to a finite conception, and would at the same time clear the way for the higher possibility of an infinite conception, beyond the comprehensible.⁹

But if God is truly incomprehensible, then God is such that we cannot understand his essence or what he is. Similarly, if he is truly ineffable, then we cannot express in words what he is either. That makes systematic reflection on such an entity extremely challenging, to say the least. For whatever is incomprehensible is literally beyond our ken, and whatever is ineffable is literally beyond expression. Such conceptual challenges appear to stymie systematic theology at the outset.¹⁰

To these two challenges about the explanatory ambition and conceptual content of systematic theology, we may add a third, which we might call the “Balkanized” nature of modern systematic theology. By this I mean that a map of the field of theology as it exists today would reveal many different and (often) mutually hostile fiefdoms, each of which is vying for some larger segment of the religious landscape. This is a problem concerning the currently fractured state of the field. There are many different methods of doing theology, many different schools of thought associated with the theological task. The proliferation of differences in how one thinks about the theological task and how one prosecutes it has become so much a part of the modern theological scene that one is inescapably required to specify the sort of systematic theology being attempted.

Hence, there is no such thing as systematic theology simpliciter. Perhaps there never was such a thing except in the imaginary worlds of textbook surveys; but, in any case, it is well and truly extinct now. Instead, there are tradition-specific varieties of theology, confessional and constructive theologies, dogmatic and systematic theologies, “contextual” and “minority” theologies,¹¹ modern and postmodern theologies, and so on. This is systematic theology as “boutique theology,” to coin a phrase—theology catering to a particular, and often select or discerning, clientele. An example: suppose Jones, an American Protestant Christian, aligns herself with the Wesleyan tradition. What sort of Wesleyan is she? United Methodist, Holiness, Free Evangelical? What sort of Wesleyan theology does she find attractive—classical, revisionist, liberal, postmodern, Open Theist? What sort of theological purview shapes her theological vision—that of Dead White European males, of Majority World theologies, Liberation theology, Feminist, Womanist, Mujerista, Black theology? Even if her work represents none of these things, it must be written in a way that is cognizant of them, and of the challenges they present to her way of going about the theological task in the context of North America today.

Some of the distinctions just mentioned might be thought to fall outside the purview of systematic theology, strictly speaking. Sometimes constructive theology is regarded as something different from systematic theology, and as certainly different from confessional theology. But that need not be the case. One can do theological construction from within a given tradition as a contribution to that tradition rather than in opposition to it. Or take the dialectic between dogmatic and systematic theology. Are they the same thing? Not necessarily, though the distinction is a fuzzy one in much contemporary Protestant Christian doctrine.¹² However, if dogmatic theology is the examination of the dogmatic deposit of the faith (as understood by a given tradition), then this may function as a subfield within systematic theology. It is, on this way of thinking, a kind of systematic approach to Christian doctrine that privileges particular doctrines that have a dogmatic shape provided by confessions and creeds, in which case dogmatic theology is a species of systematic theology after all.

This leads to consideration of a fourth challenge for the systematic theologian, which has to do with the integrity of systematic theology a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Part One The Task of Theology
• Part Two God and Creation
• Part Three Christ and Salvation
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright