John Frame's Selected Shorter Writings, Volume 3

John M. Frame

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781629951904
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Christliche Theologie

Frame's short, pointed essays give insights into battles within the Reformed camp, clarify theological concepts, and introduce some of his main ideas in theological method, apologetics, and the Christian life.

PART 1

Nature and Method of Theology

1

Muller on Theology

Richard A. Muller, The Study of Theology: From Biblical Interpretation to Contemporary Formulation, Foundations of Contemporary Interpretation 7 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1991). Originally published in WTJ 56, 1 (Spring 1994): 438–42. Used by permission.

Note, 2014: As I mentioned in the preface, I value this review article in a special way, since it set forth clearly for the first time how my concept of theological method differs from the academic-historical approach advocated by Muller and by most theologians writing today. I had hoped to open a dialogue on the subject, but that never happened. Muller’s reply to me in WTJ was fairly hostile and in my judgment was an exercise in name-calling. There was better interaction in response to my “In Defense of Something Close to Biblicism,” chapter 2 in this volume. But I do want to make it clear here that I have great respect for Muller’s achievements in the history of doctrine, despite our disagreements in formulating the concept of theology.

Richard Muller is certainly one of the most impressive scholars writing today in the fields of history of doctrine and systematic theology. Therefore, news that he has addressed the question of theological method properly arouses our expectations. In some respects, this book did not disappoint me: it is learned and erudite, it provides a useful compendium of much ancient and recent wisdom on the subject, and there is very little in it with which I literally disagree. On the whole, however, I found the book deeply unsatisfactory, for reasons that will appear later.

The book is important both in its achievements and in its shortcomings. Positively, it formulates, more concisely and clearly than ever before, the thinking that underlies much (possibly most) evangelical and Reformed theology in our time, a pattern of thinking that is arguably very different from the dominant pattern fifty years ago. Negatively, the book’s weaknesses reveal potentially fatal flaws in that theological mentality and therefore raise hard questions that every contemporary Reformed or evangelical theologian must ask.

But first, we must see what Muller wants to tell us. He begins by posing the much-discussed question of the relation of theory to practice in preparation for the ministry. As a foil, he presents the extreme view of one unnamed recent D.Min. graduate (I will call him Elmer, for I want to refer to him from time to time) who scorned all theoretical, academic study, and who complimented his D.Min. program because it required “no theological speculation, no ivory-tower critical thinking, no retreat from the nitty-gritty of daily ministry” (p. vii). In contrast, Muller notes his own seven-year experience in the pastorate, in which “everything I had learned both in seminary and in graduate school had been of use to me in my ministry” (p. viii). How, then, can we show that the traditional academic disciplines really are relevant to the pastoral ministry? Or should we simply abandon those disciplines, as Elmer would prefer?

Muller thinks we can best answer these questions by carefully reviewing the nature of the traditional fourfold theological curriculum: biblical, historical, systematic, and practical theology. Like E. D. Hirsch, Allan Bloom, and others in the field of general education, Muller advocates in theological education a renewed appreciation of traditional models and content, not only to create a better-informed clergy, but also as a means of forming character (pp. xiii–xiv).

Elmer might be rather scandalized at the suggestion that academic theological study builds character. We will have to follow the argument; but first, more questions. Muller points out that the traditional curriculum is also under stress in our time because of the proliferation of subdisciplines and because of wide differences (especially since the Enlightenment) about history, hermeneutics, and method as well as doctrine. Those problems, too, are on his agenda.

Some potential solutions exist in recent volumes on theology written by Gerhard Ebeling, Edward Farley, and Wolf hart Pannenberg. Ebeling, according to Muller, sacrifices the unity of theology because of his unwillingness to exclude options that he deems to be open questions in the present discussion (p. 45). Farley finds the unity of theology only in the student, and the goal of theology not in the impartation of a definite content, but in the “shaping of human beings under an ideal” (p. 50). Pannenberg, however, reminds us of the importance of objective historical content and scientific method. Muller’s response to these positions is to seek a balance between objective study and subjective character formation, without sacrificing the unity of the discipline (pp. 40–41, 60). We will see that his theological method is, as we might expect from his past writings, strongly influenced by the method of historical study. It is this kind of careful study, he believes, that generates the best in contemporary theological formulation and pastoral character.¹

Muller analyzes in turn the four major theological disciplines in order to show the path “from biblical interpretation to contemporary formulation” (to cite his subtitle). In biblical studies (where he considers himself only a “dabbler at best” [p. xvii]), he emphasizes the importance of reading the text in its original setting, “to place us as readers of the text into the milieu of its authors” (p. 68). This principle forbids us, for example, to assume that the monogenēs of John 1:14, 18 “stands as a direct reference” to inter-Trinitarian relationships, or to read “image of God” in Genesis 1:27 as a reference to Christ or to human virtues (p. 66), at least in the “basic interpretation” or “primary exegetical reading” (p. 74) of the text. It is also wrong, he says, to read Psalm 2:7 “in terms of an inter-Trinitarian begetting or even in terms of the New Testament application of the text to Christ (Heb. 1:5) if done at a primary level of interpretation” (p. 66).² Such interpretations would not, he says, have occurred to the original authors or readers, and therefore they are not historically responsible. Further, such interpretations fail to allow the Scriptures to speak for themselves, to rule over our dogmatic formulations (p. 81).

Therefore, if we want a right understanding of the NT, we must read the OT “separately” (p. 71), not as if it were “interpretatively subordinate in all its statements to the New Testament” (p. 73). Indeed, it must be studied “critically as a pre-Christian and, therefore, to a certain extent non-Christian body of literature” (ibid.). Nor should the NT be “understood as the second of two books that God once wrote.” Rather, it should be understood as part of an “unbroken stream of writings extending from the Old Testament through the so-called intertestamental period, and followed historically by an unbroken stream of writings extending from the last book of the New Testament down to the present” (p. 79). Muller does affirm the canonical status of our Bible, distinct in that respect from the rest of the “unbroken stream” of writings (pp. 81–82). But that status is justified by objective historical analysis of the entire stream.

Biblical theology as such considers “the unity and larger implication” of the biblical materials and thus “joins biblical study to the other theological disciplines” (p. 85). Over against systematic theology, it addresses “the religion of the Bible on its own terms” (p. 86), “free from the encumbrances of later dogmatic language” (p. 92). Such study can “point critically and constructively toward contemporary systematic and practical theology precisely because it is constructed biblically and historically without reference to the structures of churchly dogmatics” (pp. 94–95).

Church history and history of doctrine also, in Muller’s view, should be seen as in some sense independent of dogmatics: “at least for our times, the historical investigation must precede the doctrinal statement and in fact supply the information from which the doctrinal statement takes its shape and on which it rests” (p. 99). His example: It is

doctrinally arguable to attribute the accurate preservation of the text of Scripture to divine providence . . . . Historical investigation cannot, however, rest content with the doctrinal explanation but must look to the process of the transmission of the text and examine the techniques and procedures of the Masoretes, the monastic calligraphers of the church, and the scholarly editors of later centuries, and find in the actual practice of these people the historical grounds for arguing whether or not the text has been accurately preserved. (Ibid.)

The historian of doctrine is not to “evaluate in any ultimate sense the rightness or wrongness of Arius’ views” (p. 99). “A dogmatic reading of the materials that assumes the rightness of Nicea on the basis of some contemporary orthodoxy will entirely miss the full significance of the council” (p. 100). Some of the church fathers, ignoring this rule, produced “incredibly theologically biased interpretations” (p. 102), such as the triumphalism of Eusebius of Caesarea and Augustine’s identification of the institutional church with the “city of God.” Objective historical study corrects such bias.

Objective history also helps us to see the differences between biblical content and later formulations. Presbyterian church government, says Muller, owes more to the structure of Swiss cantons than to the NT, from which little of a definitive nature can be gathered on that subject (p. 104). And the formulations of Anselm and the Reformers concerning the atonement owe much to the doctrinal concerns of the later church. Though substitutionary atonement is “firmly rooted in Scripture,” there are other “equally biblical” views (“ransom from bondage to the powers of the world,” “the free gift of reconciling love through the loving example of Christ”). The Protestant churches adopted the penal substitutionary view because it was “a perfect corollary of the doctrine of justification through faith alone” (p. 107). Thus we learn how doctrines are formulated, and we learn how to participate in the process. Character is developed as we understand and come to join the unfinished task, as we come to understand our “roots” (pp. 107–8).

Such historical study extends to the history of religions. Although specialists in the history of religions tend to relativize the claims of Christianity, the discipline can perform useful service for Christian theology. For instance, the triumph of Christianity in the ancient world can be better understood once we understand the mystery religions and other rivals that Christianity had to overcome (pp. 115ff.).

Systematic theology is “the broadest usage for the contemporary task of gathering together the elements of our faith into a coherent whole” (p. 124). It is “oriented to the question of contemporary validity,” and therefore must consider philosophical and apologetic issues (p. 125). Dogmatic theology is a subdivision of systematics, which is “the contemporary exposition of the great doctrines of the church” (p. 127). Again, Muller emphasizes the unilateral priority of biblical and historical theology to systematics: the latter “is a result, not a premise of the other disciplines” (p. 129). Nevertheless, there is a “churchly hermeneutical circle” (ibid.) that finds “closure” in dogmatics and therefore “returns, via the tradition, to the text and provides a set of theological boundary-concepts for the continuing work of theology” (p. 130). Nevertheless, we must not use a doctrinal construction as “a key” to Scripture so that “the scriptural Word becomes stifled by a human a priori” (ibid.). In this connection he takes to task the many “centrisms” of theology: Barth’s Christomonism, the modernists’ use of “God is love” to the exclusion of other divine attributes, and so forth.

Philosophy is useful to the work of systematic theology. “Philosophical theology can be defined as the philosophical discussion of topics held in common by theology and philosophy” (p. 138). This discipline, “in order to be true to itself, must not utilize Scripture or churchly standards of truth: it rests on the truths of logic and reason—and occupies the ground of what has typically been called ‘natural theology’” (p. 139).³ Nevertheless, philosophical theology, “so long as it stands within the circle of the theological encyclopedia, must be a Christian discipline, no matter how philosophically determined its contents” (p. 141). Christian without Christian “standards of truth”? Yes, in the sense that it is limited to topics of concern to Christian theology.

Philosophy of religion is distinct from philosophical theology, though there is overlap. Philosophical theology “provides a logical and rational check on dogmatic formulation. Philosophy of religion, by way of contrast, considers the nature of religion itself a focus that it shares with the phenomenology of religion” (p. 139).⁴

Ethics is “the translation of the materials of Christian teaching . . . into the contemporary life situation of the community of belief, first as principles and then as enactments” (p. 147). As such, Muller thinks, it is distinct from doctrinal theology (p. 146).

In his discussion of apologetics, he recognizes with the presuppositional school that that discipline “rests on the presupposition of faith or belief,”⁵ while “its actual content must be dictated as much by the circumstances of the argument as by the content of the message.” And as it rests on faith, it in turn influences theological formulation (p. 151).

As we might expect, Muller’s interest in practical theology is mainly to emphasize its theological character. While it ...