Through the apostolic ministry, Jesus translates his eternal reality and saving work into the preaching of the apostles, which is today condensed into the New Testament. As true God and man, Christ is present to his Church. Within his Church, Christ continues to exchange sin and death for life and righteousness through the sacraments and the preaching office.
Therefore, ultimately, the presence of the risen Jesus and the exchange of realities he affects through his continuing presence in the Word and sacrament ministry of the Church makes theology possible. The theology of the Church depends on the real presence of incarnate Christ, which manifests as infinite and absolute. Yet, at the same time, Christ’s presence is contextual. Through the teachers and pastors of the Church, the risen Christ translates himself into the theology of the Church in the way that he translated himself into his Incarnate life: through the work of the Word and the Spirit.
Luther’s engagement with Scripture offers us some important conceptual tools at this point. In his commentary on Psalm 119, the Reformer argued that the language of the Psalm provided the Church with a model of how theologians ought to engage the truth of the biblical text. For Luther, “prayer, meditation, and suffering/testing form a theologian” (oratio, meditatio, tentatio faciunt theologum).
Before engaging the Scriptures and seeking truth, the theologian must first pray and ask the Holy Spirit for guidance. Knowledge of God’s truth and its proper interpretation occur by grace alone, that is, on the basis of God’s initiative. Having prayed, the theologian now engages the external word of the Bible through meditation. Luther emphasized the need to read the Scriptures repeatedly. He compared this process to turning the Scriptures over in one’s mind like a smooth stone. Later Lutheran theologians, like Johann Gerhard, added to Luther’s account of meditatio. According to Gerhard, the Spirit incorporates a theologian’s historical and linguistic knowledge into his heart and mind through a divinely endowed practical habit (i.e., an aptitude in Aristotelian philosophy, habitus practicus).
Finally, the interpreter must proclaim his scriptural findings to the world and, therefore, render himself subject to tentatio – suffering or testing. If the theologian’s teaching proves to be a false interpretation of Scripture, then fellow Christians oppose this interpretation and correct his understanding through Scripture and sound reason. If theologian correctly explicates God’s Word, the sinful world will oppose him, and he will bear the cross as a witness to the truth. Either way, he will be driven back to the Spirit through prayer and to the Scriptures through meditation. The cycle of engagement with the Word of God then begins again.
To be continued…..
From the draft manuscript for Lutheran Dogmatics: The Evangelical-Catholic Faith for an Age of Contested Truth (Lexham Press).
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