On Thinking New Theological Thoughts

Stephen Shields quotes some good passages from John Murray on thinking new thoughts theologically:

"However epochal have been the advances made at certain periods and however great the contributions of particular men we may not suppose that theological construction ever reaches definitive finality. There is the danger of a stagnant traditionalism and we must be alert to this danger, on the one hand, as to that of discarding our historical moorings, on the other."

Murray continues, "When any generation is content to rely upon its theological heritage and refuses to explore for itself the riches of divine revelation, then declension is already under way and heterodoxy will be the lot of the succeeding generation.... A theology that does not build on the past ignores our debt to history and naively overlooks the fact that the present is conditioned by history. A theology that relies on the past evades the demands of the present"(emphasis mine, from his article "Systematic Theology" - see Looking Beyond the Facade of Modernity, Part 2).

I think Murray nails it there, and it is especially helpful to read words like this from one of the most conservative stalwarts in the Reformed tradition.  He strikes the proper balance - warning us against guarding our historical moorings, while providing an equal warning against confining our agenda to always restating our historical positions.

In all of our discussions about culture and relevance I think one of the things we often miss is that theology is always driven by the culture.  The Bible nowhere gives us a neatly packaged Apostles or Nicene Creed, a Westminster Confession, or a Chicago Statement on Inerrancy.  All confessions of faith are written in particular times and places in response to particular issues raised by the church of the day and the surrounding cultures of the day.  Theology has often been driven as a response to the philosophical ideas and movements of a particular period.

In light of this, theologians always need to be thinking new thoughts as they address new issues of any particular day.  In doing this, sometimes theologians will restate what has been said before, but at other times they will need to build on what was said before to address new issues.

At the same time, I do believe "cultural relevants" go wrong when they assume that prior theological statements can be discarded because they were formulated under conditions that no longer prevail today.  G. K. Chesterton speaks to the foolishness of such ideas when he says:

An imbecile habit has arisen in modern controversy of saying that such and such a creed can be held in one age but cannot be held in another. Some dogma, we are told, was credible in the twelfth century, but is not credible in the twentieth. You might as well say that a certain philosophy can be believed on Mondays, but cannot be believed on Tuesdays. You might as well say of a view of the cosmos that it was suitable to half-past three, but not suitable to half-past four. What a man can believe depends upon his philosophy, not upon the clock or the century.

And . . .

Therefore in dealing with any historical answer, the point is not whether it was given in our time, but whether it was given in answer to our question.

It is proper to examine the older statements to see if they erred in their exegesis.  It is also proper to examine them to see if the framers brought presuppositions to the table that skewed their understanding.  In my own Reformed tradition this has happened.  A case in point is the change in the Westminster Confession's position on the pope being the anti-Christ.

Yet, we need to avoid the "imbecile habit," of discarding the old just because it is old.  I would also say we ought to heed C. S. Lewis's counsel to maintain a bias in favor of the old.  Old ideas have been tested and proven over time, it's hard to know if new ideas are good until they have been tested from the perspective of history. 

Historical perspective is also important.  For example, for all of its claims to being new and fresh, at least one sympathetic observer of emergent has pointed out its "direct affinity with the modern, Enlightenment project."  I point that out simply to illustrate that many times, what we think of as new is really very old, and so the old critiques and theological statements are more relevant than we might think.

Having said all of this, I do think we live in a time where there are many new "demands of the present," to use Murray's term.  One of the things I think the emergents get right is their recognition that we live in the post-Constantinian or post-Christendom era.  They weren't the first to notice this.  Among others, Francis Schaeffer pointed out long ago that we live in a post-Christian world, and Hauerwas and Willimon described our post-Constantinian era in their book Resident Aliens. I think there are some huge implications to this that the church as a whole probably hasn't dealt with adequately.  The emergents are dealing with this and are to be commended for it, although in many cases they have gone off the rails.

In summary I would say that we ought to be willing to go beyond our received traditions and theological formulations to address new issues, yet we ought to let the older tradtions be our guides and reference points, while being very wary of contradicting, overturning, or discarding them.

Comments

[pgepps]

In "Tradition and the Individual Talent," T. S. Eliot discusses much the same thing with regard to literary tradition. I've found his thoughts helpful in shaping my response to this sort of question.

Briefly, Eliot points out that the existence of the Tradition inescapably conditions everything we write or can write. At the same time, what we write irrevocably changes the meaning of the Tradition for those who read us.

In order to write responsibly, then, we would both have to understand the Tradition well enough to know what our own words will mean; and to write in that knowledge, judging carefully how we will change the meaning of those words for those who come after.

In this regard, I really like Murray's pointing out that mere adherence to the last generation's POV is going to lead to error, as of course will mere rejection of the old in favor of the new. What is needed is a willingness to change, indeed an acceptance of the inevitability of change, but an earnest concern that we not "spill" the meaning of God's Word, lest it be lost to us (though it will prevail, anyway, where it is heard).

Cheers,
PGE

[Matt Gillingham]

This is a good post and very helpful. Sometimes, I think that the word "new" can be scary, especially when applied to theology. Someone always cries out, "There should be no new things in theology, what about the faith delivered once for all?"

I find it helpful to think of theology is like being a person with a camera trying to take a picture of a mountain. We point and shoot the camera; we get an image. But we can step to the left or right and take another picture. It will be a different picture from the one before, but it will be the same mountain.

In the same way, God, like the mountain, is the same. What differs is the angle. Culture changes our terrain, so that we may not have the same footholds that we had before, but the mountain is still there. "New" theological insights, when they are appropriate, are not a new mountain; they just a new angle. A view that sees things from a perspective closer to where the people of our culture are standing.

[Steve Sensenig]

David, I was trying to go to the link which you said discussed some affinity between the emergent church and the modern, Enlightenment project, and the link points to some trackback XML thing that says no URL is supplied or something like that. Could you point us to that source? Thanks!

steve :)

[Barry Wallace]

This reminds me of some things John Piper said in an address to students at Northwestern

"Imagination may be the hardest work of all in the life of the mind. And perhaps the most God-like. It is the closest we get to creation ex-nihilo. We must think of a pattern of words called a poem that has never existed before and does not now exist in any human mind. We must think of an analogy or metaphor or illustration which has no existence. We must see it in our minds when it is not there. We must create music that has never existed. All of this because we are like God and because he is infinitely worthy of ever new words and songs. "Oh sing to the LORD a new song; sing to the LORD, all the earth" (Psalm 96:1).

A college committed to the supremacy of God in the life of the mind will cultivate many fertile and a few great imaginations. And O how the world needs God-besotted minds that can say the great things of God and sing the great things of God in ways that have never been said or sung before."

The complete message, which is excellent, is here:
http://www.desiringgod.org/library/topics/culture/life_mind_03.html

[David Wayne]

Steve - thanks for catching that - the link is fixed.

[Steve Sensenig]

Cool, thank you, David!

[pgepps]

While I value Piper's appreciation for the imagination, and heartily agree that imagination is very important and often underrated, I disagree sharply with the "creativity" he attributes to it.

In fact, my dissertation topic (should I ever get the thing back on track) is a critique of the Coleridgean hermeneutic based in precisely the idea that "Primary Imagination" is "the repetition in the finite mind of the infinite I AM" and how that has led us inexorably to the point Derrida exposes for us most fully: the point where the Scriptures as constructed in many standard evangelical hermeneutical approaches are fit subjects for the deconstruction of logocentrism.

Not that Piper's being that technical, but given that he's nearly quoting Coleridge, I have to point out the disagreement. It's important that we give up on being original and creative, and accept our status as *receivers* of what is "given" in life, as in logic, and as *creatures*, not the Creator.

Confusion on that point is, ultimately, always the repetition of the fundamental sin pattern described in Romans 1.

Cheers,
PGE