Faith Speaking Understanding

Performing the Drama of Doctrine

Kevin J. Vanhoozer

• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780664234485
• eBook ISBN: 9781611645422
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

In this volume, highly esteemed scholar Kevin Vanhoozer introduces readers to a way of thinking about Christian theology that takes the work he began in the groundbreaking 2005 book, The Drama of Doctrine, to its next level. Vanhoozer argues that theology is not merely a set of cognitive beliefs, but is also something we do that involves speech and action alike. He uses a theatrical model to explain the ways in which doctrine shapes Christian understanding and forms disciples. The church, Vanhoozer posits, is the preeminent theater where the gospel is "performed, " with doctrine directing this performance. Doctrines are not simply truths to be stored, shelved, and stacked, but indications and directions to be followed, practiced, and enacted. In "performing" doctrine, Christians are shaped into active disciples of Jesus Christ. He goes on to examine the state of the church in today's world and explores how disciples can do or perform doctrine. Written in an accessible and engaging style, Faith Speaking Understanding sets forth a compelling vision of what the church is and what it should be doing, and demonstrates the importance of Christian doctrine for this mission.

Disciples who want to follow Christ in all situations need doctrinal direction as they walk onto the social stage in the great theater of the world. The Christian faith is about acknowledging, and participating in, the great thing God is doing in our world: making all things new in Christ through the Holy Spirit. Doctrine ministers understanding: of God, of the drama of redemption, of the church as a company of faithful players, and of individual actors, all of whom have important roles to play. In an age where things fall apart and centers fail to hold, doctrine centers us in Jesus Christ, in whom all things hold together.

PART 1

BEFORE THE CURTAIN RISES

ON THEOLOGY AND THEATER

Chapter 1

Doing the Word “on Earth as It Is in Heaven”

Introducing the Theater of the Gospel

Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.

—1 John 3:18 NIV

The New Testament is not a text to be analyzed so much as a set of scripts for forming a company of performers, a movement that will be Christianity.

—Terrence Tilley, The Disciples’ Jesus: Christology as Reconciling Practice

Anselm famously defined theology in his Proslogion (1077–78) as “faith seeking understanding.” Why, a thousand years later, do I make so bold as to suggest a change? And in what sense is “faith speaking understanding” a kind of performance?

FAITH SPEAKING UNDERSTANDING: THE CHALLENGE

Speaking is a form of acting, and action is a kind of speaking (“actions speak louder than words”). Actors give speeches, yet action is the language of the theater. Action, in word and deed, is also the primary means by which the church demonstrates its understanding of the world as the theater of God’s glory and of itself as the theater of the gospel.

Disciples do not need to speak Greek to live according to the Scriptures, but they do need to speak Christian. However, according to Marcus Borg, a historian of Jesus, this is easier said than done. In his hard-hitting book Speaking Christian: Why Christian Words Have Lost Their Meaning and Power, Borg points out a disconnect between the original (i.e., biblical) meaning of many Christian terms and the way Christians use them today.¹ North Americans think they know how to speak Christian, but what they say is actually a gross distortion. Either people do not know Christian words at all, or they have heard them but do not know what they mean, or they think they know what they mean when in fact they mean something completely different.

Borg is not referring to non-Christians only but also to churchgoing Christians unaware of how far the meanings of Christian terms have drifted from their historical biblical roots. The crisis in Christian language (why Johnny can’t speak Christian) is also a crisis in the church insofar as language is the stuff of worship, preaching, teaching, and so forth and thus the means by which we “do” church. Accordingly, Borg has written his book as a kind of “Christian primer,” a remedial wordbook for people who want to speak authentic Christian—not a lexicon for understanding the Christian “Greats,” but at least a graded reader.

How did it happen? How could North American Christians forget basic biblical vocabulary? Borg has two explanations. The first is modernity’s “literalization” of language, perhaps under the pressure of science. The second is the captivity of biblical language by a heaven-and-hell framework that (mis) understands the gospel as the message that we can “go to heaven” because Jesus paid the price for our sins. It turns out that “speaking Christian” is a matter not of knowing Greek or memorizing Scripture but rather of using certain biblical ideas as a lens through which to view God, world, and self.

I am as interested as Borg in disciples speaking genuine Christian, because faith attains understanding largely by means of biblical paradigms (“By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God” [Heb. 11:3]). I agree with Borg that our understanding must be disciplined by Scripture’s way of speaking, and that one key Christian term—believing—means considerably more than affirming certain statements to be true.²

“How to understand Christian language is the central conflict in Christianity today.”³ If theology trains disciples to speak “proper” (i.e., biblical) Christian, then Borg’s claim that “speaking Christian” is in a state of crisis means that theology, too, is in a state of crisis. This is particularly so as concerns theology’s presence (unremarkable) and influence (minimal) in the church. The real issue, as Borg rightly observes, concerns what Christianity is about. Is the gospel about the afterlife and what we must believe to get to heaven? Or is it about God’s passion for the loving transformation of this present life on earth?⁴ According to Borg, we must choose between two competing visions, the water of contemporary literalism and the wine of biblical symbolism: “What separates them is how the shared language is understood.”⁵ Indeed! Followers of Jesus should therefore want, above all things, to speak with “a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ” (cf. Philem. 6). Borg’s own speech, no more than a sound bite really, is ultimately too abbreviated to be helpful: “The Christian message reduced to its essentials is: love God (as known in Jesus) and change the world.”⁶ Yes—but how?

Speaking Christian is a matter of faith speaking understanding, of theology articulated. Each element in this definition is important. Faith: what Christians speak is what they have received through faith in the apostolic word of the gospel. As Calvin notes in his Institutes, what determines faith as Christian is the word that forms and informs it: “For by his Word, God rendered faith unambiguous forever, a faith that should be superior to all opinion,” and to make it permanent, God recorded his oracles on public tablets.⁷ Speaking: theology arises when the church realizes “that it must give an account to God for the way in which it speaks.”⁸ Understanding: everything Christians say gives evidence of their understanding of God’s prior word and act, especially as this concerns the history of Jesus and the meaning of the gospel. What is Christianity all about, what did Jesus’ death accomplish, and what precisely is the gospel?

“Faith speaking understanding” presupposes knowledge of the grammar of faith: doctrine. Learning the language (and grammar) of faith is both means and end of Christian discipleship. Augustine seemed to think so too, if the opening paragraph of his work On Christian Doctrine is any indication: “There are two things on which all interpretation of Scripture depends: the process of discovering what we need to learn, and the process of presenting what we have learnt.”⁹ Theology speeds disciples on their way to right seeking and wise speaking: to discovering, with the ultimate aim of presenting, understanding.

What is it to speak, and present, understanding? I agree with George Steiner: to understand something is to be able to translate it.¹⁰ To “speak understanding” is to express the meaning of the gospel in some language; to present understanding is to translate the meaning of the gospel into various forms of language, logic, and life. Christian theology is the task of translating—discovering and presenting—the meaning of the gospel of Jesus Christ for us today. The special vocation of the church is to seek, speak, and show nothing less, and nothing else, than Jesus Christ, and him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2).

THE WITNESS AS DOER OF THE WORD: JAMES’S MIRROR AND JESUS’ HOUSE

It is but a small step from the idea of “presenting” faith’s understanding to “performing” it. Or is it? Some readers may rightly worry that to speak of faith and theology in terms of performance is to encourage an activist view (as if Christianity were about works righteousness) or, what is worse, a display of one’s supposed skill in righteous living, a sure path to prideful ruin. Those (like me) who speak about “performing” doctrine would do well to keep Jesus’ words in mind: “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven” (Matt. 6:1). Performing with the wrong motivation is an ongoing danger.

There are, however, other motives for performing faith. Indeed, we have only to look to Jesus’ own example. Jesus does (i.e., performs) God’s will, embodying the reign of God through his willingness to give himself up for the world. There is nothing we can do to add to the finished work and definitive performance of Christ; however, it does not follow that there is nothing for Christians to do. On the contrary, Christ calls his disciples to participate in his work by bearing witness to its achievement and to do so in word and deed. If actions speak louder than words, it is because they lend the weight of behavior (real assent) to belief (nominal assent).

Nominal Christianity falls short of true witness and discipleship. The way witnesses live clarifies the meaning of their words and may even count as an argument for the truth of what they say. The disciples’ “performance” of faith must be motivated first and foremost by the love of God. This is the one thing above every other that disciples must perform, as Kierkegaard makes clear in his Purity of Heart Is to Will One Thing, one of his “edifying discourses.” How, asks Kierkegaard, should the ideal reader respond to his challenge to will one thing only (i.e., the good—God)? “To listen in order to act, this is the highest thing of all.”¹¹ He goes on to compare worship to a theater and himself to a prompter who reminds those on stage of their lines. What the actor says matters because “each word becomes true when embodied in him, true through him.”¹² People of faith who would speak understanding cannot therefore be content with speaking only.

For whom do witnesses perform their understanding of the gospel? Clearly, disciples ought to enact their faith out in the open in order to communicate their understanding of God and the gospel to others: “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:16). At the same time, everything that disciples do is potentially a way of worshiping and glorifying God, the audience of one to whom our lived confession of faith is ultimately directed. On this, the apostle Paul and Kierkegaard agree: “We speak, not to please mortals, but to please God who tests our hearts” (1 Thess. 2:4). Kierkegaard compares God to a critical theatergoer “who looks on to see how the lines are spoken.”¹³ The salient point is that those who receive instruction are not passive listeners but active actors, responsible for acting out what they have heard and received. The witness presents faith’s understanding by translating it into action.

Witnesses must therefore not only speak but also do “Christian.” This is the moral of the famous mirror image of the apostle James: “But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget what they were like” (Jas. 1:22–24). By contrast, those who look into the mirror of the word of God—the Two-Testament story of God bringing captives out of bondage—see themselves as they truly are: people who have been brought into the kingdom of light by him who is light. The challenge, then, is to live out, to perform, our Spirit-given freedom: to be not “hearers who forget” but “doers who act” (Jas. 1:25). Doctrine is thus something dramatic: something to be not only heard and believed but also demonstrated, done, and acted out. The path of becoming Christlike is not passive. Grace is opposed not to effort but to the idea of earning.¹⁴ The key to nurturing disciples is well-directed action.

Jesus himself expects his disciples to perform his doctrine. Toward the end of his teaching on the law in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus employs the metaphor of house building to make a point similar to James’s mirror: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock” (Matt. 7:24; cf. Ezek. 33:30–33). And again, like James, Jesus contrasts the way of wisdom and true discipleship with an abbreviated hearing that stops short of performance: “And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand” (Matt. 7:26). Dietrich Bonhoeffer rightly calculates the cost of genuine discipleship: “Only [one] who believes is obedient, and only [one] who is obedient believes.”¹⁵

What is ultimately at stake in the idea of performing is the very nature of Christian faith: does belief that fails to issue in behavior count as genuine witness (and understanding) or not? There is something inherently “performatory” about the logic of first-person confessional utterances (“I believe”; “We believe”). Such statements are not merely descriptive, informing others of the contents of one’s consciousness, but also dispositional, indicating the posture of one’s being and behavior toward the content of one’s belief. If we believe what we say, we ought to be prepared to stand by it and act appropriately. Believing “is action-oriented, situation-related, and embedded in the particularities and contingencies of everyday living.”¹⁶ The local church is the community that seeks both ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: “In Accordance with the Scriptures”: Local Church as “Living Bible”
• Part 1: Before The Curtain Rises: On Theology And Theater
• Part 2. Faith Showing Understanding: How Doctrine Makes Disciples And How Disciples Do Doctrine
• Conclusion: Tell and Show: Exhibiting the Gospel in Company with Christ
• Appendix: What Has Broadway to Do with Jerusalem?
• Selected Bibliography
• Index of Scripture References
• Index of Subjects