The Character of Theology

An Introduction to Its Nature, Task, and Purpose

John R. Franke

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2005
• Print ISBN: 9780801026416
• eBook ISBN: 9781441206534
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Theology done in today's context is strikingly different from past evangelical approaches. In this new project John Franke, writing with our postmodern world in mind, reflects these directions. He offers an introduction to theology that covers the usual territory, but does so attuned to today's ecclesial and cultural context.

In contradistinction to more traditional works, Franke:

- critiques traditional evangelical theological conceptions
- emphasizes the "local" nature of theology
- engages the postmodern context
- contrasts conservative and postconservative approaches
- interacts with the broader faith community

Sure to provoke intense discussion, The Character of Theology will help Christians to be faithful in a world in which the spiritual and intellectual landscape is ever changing.

1

Doing Theology Today

Theology is disciplined consideration and exploration of the content of divine revelation. This succinct statement provides a fairly common and commendable way to define theology. It affirms that the work of theology involves careful and ordered thought and reflection and that it is dependent and focused on revelation. However, for all its strengths, such a definition, coupled with the etymology of the word theology (the study of God), can give the appearance that the knowledge of God is theology’s only major concern. The sixteenth-century Reformer John Calvin, at the opening of his classic, seminal work in theology, Institutes of the Christian Religion, asserts that “nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.”1 According to Calvin, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves are inextricably bound together and mutually dependent on each other in such a way that we cannot properly claim to possess an appropriate and adequate grasp of either apart from a knowledge of the other. As he puts it, “Without knowledge of self there is no knowledge of God” but also, “Without knowledge of God there is no knowledge of self.”2 To know ourselves as human beings we must know God, and to know God we must know ourselves. A proper understanding of these interconnected and dialectical aspects of knowledge leads to “true and sound wisdom.”

Calvin’s observation continues to provide a helpful model for reflecting on the character of theology and suggests that we must always be attentive not only to the knowledge of God but also to the knowledge of ourselves as human beings if we hope to practice an approach to theology that leads to wisdom. We must also be attentive to the fact that the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves are not available to us in the form of timeless and undisputed teaching. Instead, we learn from the history of Christian thought that doctrines and conceptions of God and the nature of the human condition, as well as many other significant matters, have been developed and formulated in the context of numerous social, historical, and cultural settings and have in turn been shaped by these settings. This suggests that in the discipline of theology we must take account of the particular social and intellectual settings in which we engage in theological reflection and exploration. This is part of the knowledge of ourselves that is crucial for theology. In the contemporary setting, our knowledge of self is intimately bound up with the postmodern condition and our awareness of the thoroughly situated nature of all human thought and activity. Doing theology that promotes true and sound wisdom means bearing faithful witness to the God revealed in Jesus Christ in ways that are appropriate to our status as finite creatures in the midst of ever-shifting contexts and circumstances. It also means being responsible to the church, the body of Christ, in its historical and global manifestations.

Thinking about theology in this way raises questions concerning the character of theology. What is theology? What is the nature and status of theological reflection as practiced by finite human beings? How can we talk responsibly about the infinite God? What does theology attempt to accomplish? What is its purpose? These questions are of considerable importance to the life and witness of the church. As J. Andrew Kirk maintains, in considering such questions, we are “investigating an operation on which hangs in large part the healthy life of the whole Christian community, for if we do not get the theological task right, every other task is likely to be out of kilter.”3 To reveal the opportunities and challenges facing the church as it seeks to do theology in the contemporary setting and to provide some background for a discussion of the character of theology, this chapter examines the contemporary situation in which the practice of theology takes place and the current state of the discipline, particularly as it relates to developments in liberal and conservative approaches to theology. It also provides a basic description of theology and a working definition. The next chapter focuses on the subject of theology, the Triune God revealed in Jesus Christ. The background provided by these two chapters will facilitate an introduction to the nature, task, and purpose of theology taken up in the final three chapters.

The Postmodern Situation

The current cultural context in North America, as well as in much of the world, can be generally and felicitously labeled and described as “postmodern.” At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the intellectual milieu of Western thought and culture is in a state of transition precipitated by the perceived failure of the philosophical, societal, and ethical assumptions of the modern world spawned by the Enlightenment. This transition has been spurred on and marked by the emergence of postmodern theory and its thoroughgoing critique of the modern project, with its quest for certain, objective, and universal knowledge. It has also involved a series of disparate provisional attempts to engage in new forms of conversation and intellectual pursuit in the aftermath of modernity. One observer notes that when we survey “the panorama of contemporary thought it is evident in field after field, in discipline after discipline, that a significant critique of modernity has arisen along with a discussion of a paradigm change. The upshot is that the kind of change under discussion is not incremental or piecemeal, but structural and thoroughgoing.”4

This state of affairs raises the question as to the proper conception of the postmodern situation. It is important to realize that a precise understanding of postmodernity is notoriously difficult to pin down. Yet in spite of the fact that there is no consensus concerning the meaning of the term, it has become almost a commonplace to refer to the contemporary cultural situation as “postmodern.” The lack of clarity about the term has been magnified by the vast array of interpreters who have attempted to comprehend and appropriate postmodern thought. Paul Lakeland observes that there are “probably a thousand different self-appointed commentators on the postmodern phenomenon and bewildering discrepancies between the ways many of these authors understand the term postmodern and its cognates.”5 In the context of this lack of clarity about the postmodern phenomenon, the term has come to signify widely divergent hopes and concerns among those who are attempting to address the emerging cultural and intellectual shift it implies.

This situation has led David Tracy to assert that there is really “no such phenomenon as postmodernity.”6 Instead, there are only numerous and varied expressions of the postmodern condition. In this context, Kevin Vanhoozer speaks of the postmodern condition as “something that is at once intellectual/theoretical and cultural/practical, a condition that affects modes of thought as well as modes of embodiment.” He points out that a condition should be differentiated from a position, a particular point of view on a certain idea, issue, or question, as something that is “altogether more diffuse, an environment in which one lives and moves and, in some sense, has one’s being.”7 In this sense, the postmodern condition is not something we simply choose to affirm or deny. It is rather a descriptor of the social and intellectual context in which we function. Yet in spite of the numerous manifestations of the postmodern condition and the divergent opinions and struggles concerning the portrayal of postmodernity in various domains and situations, Steven Best and Douglas Kellner maintain “that there is a shared discourse of the postmodern, common perspectives, and defining features that coalesce into an emergent postmodern paradigm.”8 However, since this new postmodern paradigm is emerging but neither mature nor regnant, it continues to be hotly contested by both those who desire to embrace it for particular purposes and those who find reason to oppose it. Best and Kellner suggest that the representations of this emerging paradigm that take shape in the context of intellectual, social, and cultural activity constitute “a borderland between the modern and something new for which the term ‘postmodern’ has been coined.”9 Here we will focus on postmodern thought as it pertains to the practice of theology as part of the Christian witness to this borderland culture.

The intellectual and cultural transition from modernity to postmodernity is generating serious questions for the discipline of theology. However, while some have raised concerns about changes in the discipline due to shifting intellectual and cultural circumstances, it is important to remember that such challenges are not new for Christian faith, particularly given its missional impulse. The expression of Christianity and Christian teaching have taken shape and been revised and reformed in the context of numerous cultural and historical circumstances. Throughout this history, the discipline of theology has shown itself to be remarkably adaptable in its task of assisting the church in extending and establishing the message of the gospel in a wide variety of contexts. If we are to address faithfully and appropriately the opportunities and challenges presented by the contemporary setting, we must understand the nature of the cultural transition that is occurring as well as its significance for the theological discipline. In short, we must come to terms with the challenge of doing theology in a postmodern context.

One common response among Christian thinkers to the emergence of postmodern thought has been to view it primarily as a threat to Christian faith. Catholic theologian Richard John Neuhaus suggests that many have reacted to postmodernity by connecting it with relativism and subjectivism and calling it the enemy of basic thinking about moral truth.10 This sort of response has been characteristic of thinkers across the theological spectrum. At the heart of this critique is the consistent identification of postmodern thought with relativism and nihilism. In this conception, postmodernism is viewed as fundamentally antithetical to Christian faith. Merold Westphal comments that at “varying degrees along a spectrum that runs from mildly allergic to wildly apoplectic,” many Christian thinkers “are inclined to see postmodernism as nothing but warmed-over Nietzschean atheism, frequently on the short list of the most dangerous anti-Christian currents of thought as an epistemological relativism that leads ineluctably to moral nihilism. Anything goes.”11 This view has been especially common among conservative and evangelical Christian thinkers who have commonly tended to assume that postmodern thought is inherently opposed to the quest for truth, even the general notion of truth, and by extension the particular truth claims of the Christian faith.

One reason for this assumption has to do with a misunderstanding concerning the nature of metanarratives. Jean-François Lyotard famously summed up postmodernity in the following manner: “Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives.”12 This statement has led numerous Christian thinkers to conclude that, since Christianity is a metanarrative, postmodern thought must be incompatible with Christian faith. However, Lyotard’s account of the postmodern condition as incredulity toward metanarratives need not be viewed as a critique of the Christian gospel. Westphal makes a distinction between the Christian meganarrative and a metanarrative, noting that in philosophical discourse the prefix “meta” signifies a difference of level rather than of size. “A metanarrative is a metadiscourse in the sense of being a second-level discourse not directly about the world but about first-level discourse.”13 As James K. A. Smith points out, for Lyotard, metanarratives are a distinctly modern phenomenon in that they not only attempt to articulate a meganarrative or grand story but also assert the ability to legitimate the story, along with its entailments, by an appeal to universal, autonomous reason.14

According to Westphal, the issue of legitimation is “absolutely central for Lyotard, the tight link between modernity and metanarrative in his mind.”15 Hence, Lyotard’s incredulity refers to the suspicion and critique of the modern notion of a universal rationality without commitments as a basis for the legitimation of the narrative of modernity. As such, acceptance of this incredulity does not require the relinquishment of the meganarrative and message of Scripture. Therefore, this particular iteration of the postmodern project, with its thorough critique of autonomous human reason, is one in which orthodox Christians committed to the narratives and teachings of Scripture should find much of which to be supportive. In fact, Westphal concludes that Christians ought to share the skepticism and suspicion of Lyotard with respect to the metanarratives of modernity and their attempt at self-legitimation. “The Christian story legitimatizes only one kingdom, the Kingdom of God. In the process it delegitimizes every human kingdom, including democratic capitalism and the Christian church, just to the degree that they are not the full embodiment of God’s Kingdom.” The metanarratives and stories of modernity are established, told, and affirmed to legitimize their human raconteurs, while the Christian narrative places all human perception, effort, and accomplishment under scrutiny and judgment. While Christians may properly maintain that in one sense we know how the story ends, with the glorification of God in the exaltation of Jesus Christ, at whose name every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that he is Lord, in another important sense we do not know. For instance, while we may know how the story ends with respect to God and Jesus, “we do not know which aspects of our work will be burned as wood, hay, and stubble.”16

Thus, while Christians may share the postmodern incredulity toward the metanarratives of modernity, this does not mean that Christians are therefore completely immune from this aspect of postmodern theory. As Westphal reminds us, “While the Christian meganarrative in not inherently a metanarrative in Lyotard’s sense, it does not follow that it has not been and cannot be used as an instrument of epistemic, social, and ecclesiastical self-legitimation.” Even a cursory reading of the history of Christianity provides numerous examples of such attempts at self-legitimation and the establishment of power that attends to it. “Whenever Christians tell the biblical story in such a way as to make their systems the repository of absolute truth or to claim divine sanction for institutions that are human, all too human, they become more modern than bi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1: Doing Theology Today
• 2: The Subject of Theology
• 3: The Nature of Theology
• 4: The Task of Theology
• 5: The Purpose of Theology