Theology Archives - Page 2 of 10

April 11, 2022April 14, 2022

Must Christians Reject Modernism and Postmodernism?

Modernism presented Christian theology with both opportunities and challenges. At its best, Modernism consisted of the wreckage left over from the Christian Grand Narrative after much of it had been detonated by Enlightenment thinkers themselves. Because of this, in many instances Modernism helped Christians become more consistent with the basic principles of their religion. The secular concept of human rights is rooted in the inherent dignity of humanity based on the imago Dei (Gen. 9:6). Politically, the idea of human rights curbed abuses of authority by the church and crown. It did away with practices like torture and slavery that even Christian societies had normalized for centuries. Likewise, modern science grew out of Christian belief in a rational creator who had made a rational created order. Rational creatures made in God’s image could understand this order. On the other hand, the creation of the concept of the secular also significantly distorted Christian theology by mutilating its ability to articulate its claims in the public sphere, thereby forcing Christian theology into the straitjacket of either Liberalism or Fundamentalism.

Postmodernism, like Modernism, is full of opportunities and dangers for Christian theology. On the positive side, if appropriately understood, Postmodernism possesses the advantage of exposing secularity’s neutrality and right to arbitrate between what is real and unreal. In other words, Modernism and secularity are simply culturally constructed frameworks that served the very specific purpose of solving the problems created by the European wars of religion. Contrary to what is often believed, one does not simply strip away the religious window dressing of reality to find secular modernity lying underneath. Hence, Christians do not have to abide by the rules of secular modernity in asserting truth claims. They do not have to remove articles of the faith or assume a posture of methodological atheism/naturalism when dealing with the biblical texts as theological Liberals have done. They do not have to validate their belief in the articles of the faith on the basis of modernist standards of truth or rationality the way that many Fundamentalists have done. Neither do they have to invest secular politics with transcendent meaning and treat them as redemptive as both Liberals and Fundamentalists have done.

On the other hand, Postmodernism also represents a challenge and a problem for Christian theology. Postmodernism is not pure nihilism or subjectivism per se, as is often charged. Rather, it is a form of what we might call “provisionalism.” According to a provisionalist, there are no universal and eternal truths, only little and provisional truths. Truth is therefore always socially embedded, impermanent, and revisable. All Grand Narratives are suspect. Reality is only knowable in a fragmentary, linguistically pragmatic, and at times anti-realistic, fashion. As I will argue, this problematic for Christian theology because Christians insist on the eschatological finality of their message. Moreover, Christians must confess the truthfulness of Christianity’s Grand Narrative and insist on linguistic critical-realism.

In light of the aforementioned challenges and insights of the Postmodern project, the next chapter explores various proposals for Postmodern Christian theology in greater detail. In doing this, I will develop a critically realistic view of doctrine. The key to this approach is the Lutheran belief that the “finite is capable of the infinite” (finitum capax infiniti). If this is accurate – and Lutherans must confess that it is – then the seemingly embedded, historical, and provisional can serve as a medium for infinite, eternal, and universal truth.

From the draft manuscript for Lutheran Dogmatics: The Evangelical-Catholic Faith for an Age of Contested Truth (Lexham Press).

April 3, 2022April 1, 2022

Doing Theology: Part II

Read Part I Here

We should keep a number of relevant points in mind when examining how Luther construes the theological task. First, the cycle of oratio, meditatio, and tentatio recapitulations the Incarnation and work of Christ. Much as the Word was incarnate through the coming of the Spirit, so too divine truth becomes incarnate in the mind and proclamation of the theologian through the coming of the Word and the Spirit through oratio and meditatio.

In Christ’s incarnation, the Holy Spirit enhypostically incorporated a human nature derived from Mary into the pre-existent Word, so that He might operate in the created world. So too (at least in Johann Gerhard’s account) the Spirit incorporates the pre-existent knowledge of the theologian in the theological task. Finally, Christ’s communication of the Word was tested by his suffering and death, and validated by his resurrection. So too, the interpreter must undergo the testing of his interpretation and application of Scripture within the arena of the kingdom of the world.

The incarnational nature of the theological method of oratio, meditatio, and tentatio also shows how theology can be historically contextual and culturally responsive, while at the same time be faithfully ground in the unchanging Word of God. The theologian’s act of faithfully translating the Word of God into the contemporary idiom is brought about only by the work of the Spirit. The Spirit himself incorporates the knowledge and thought-forms available to the interpreter in his context. Since the Word of God as revelation is embedded in history and the created order, the theologian may seek to clarify the Word by drawing on multiple contextualized disciplines and sources of knowledge that will clarify its meaning.

March 31, 2022April 1, 2022

Doing Theology: Part I

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).

March 15, 2022

Inerrancy and Science Part 5: Rationality and Science as a Function of Creation

Only a doctrine of creation ex nihilo as taught by the Bible, where God’s rationality determines nature all the way down to its deepest level, could provide a stable and consistent basis for science.

Ultimately, science presupposes that humans have a capacity for rationality, and that their rationality in part mirrors divine reason (i.e., it is part of the imago Dei) as reflected in the created order (Psalm 19; Romans 1).¹ This compatibility is what makes rational scientific investigation possible.² As Alister McGrath observes (following Alasdair MacIntyre³), in order to remain credible, intellectual disciplines and traditions of thought must give an account of why they are true. The story of creation that the Bible provides gives a rationale for why science should work, thereby supporting science and giving an account of why it is a rational and credible enterprise, something science obviously cannot do on its own.⁴

If such a concept of nature and humans’ ability to investigate seems self-evident to the reader, we should note that such assumptions are not held by many cultures, religions, and philosophical schools (Epicureanism, Hinduism, Theravada Buddhism, etc.). Scientific revolutions did not arise in these cultures, because they could not account for why the external world and scientific data were both rational and knowable.

From this argument it also follows that if science is possible because of the existence of a creator God, then this same God who made all things out of nothing certainly can be relied on to have the power to suspend the laws of nature and perform miracles, as the Bible reports. Therefore, as odd as it may seem to many, to have a theoretical basis for science (i.e., an almighty creator God), one must allow for the possibility of miracles. If miracles are at the very least possible, one cannot discount the inerrancy of the Bible because it contains miracles that transcend normal scientific explanation.

The Logos creates the cosmos. *God the Geometer* — mid-13th century French frontispiece (image from Wikipedia).

Hence, the atheist and materialist argument against the inerrancy of the Bible is inherently contradictory. Indeed, as Alvin Plantinga observes,⁵ if atheists and materialists are correct and the Bible is wrong about the existence of a creator God, not only would belief in science lack justification, so would atheism and materialism themselves. That is to say, if humans are the random products of evolution and not of a rational creator God, then the human mind and its perception automatically must be called into question in a fundamental way. Although evolution may be relied upon to give humans mental pictures of the world that will help them reproduce and spread their DNA, there is no particular reason to think that such ideas will correspond to actual reality. One can imagine the human mind producing all sorts of false beliefs that would promote reproduction and survival but that would not necessarily be true in the sense of corresponding to reality. This uncertainty about whether a mind that has randomly evolved for the purpose of spreading DNA could generate true beliefs about reality would also call into question the validity of atheism and materialism. Hence, atheism and materialism self-destruct from the implications of their own premises. Ultimately, they cannot even give a coherent account of a reality in which human beings could genuinely know that atheism and materialism were true.

Part 1 available here; Part 2 available here; Part 3 available here; and Part 4 available here

[1] Luther: reason is “something divine.” Disputation Concerning Man, 1536 (AE 34:137; WA 39/1:175).

[2] Alister McGrath, A Scientific Theology, vol. 1: Nature (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2003), 197–203.

[3] See Alasdair MacInytre, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988).

[4] Alister McGrath, A Scientific Theology, vol. 2: Reality (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2006), 55–121.

[5] Alvin Plantinga, “Is Naturalism Irrational?” in The Analytical Theist: An Alvin Plantinga Reader, ed. James Sennett (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1998), 72–96.

Adapted from Jack D. Kilcrease, Holy Scripture, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, Gifford A. Grobien, ed. (Fort Wayne, IN: The Luther Academy, 2020), 116-117.

March 8, 2022

Inerrancy and Science Part 4: Creation Ex Nihilo as the Basis of Science

In the light of the paradigmatic anomalies of irreducible complexity, gene entropy, and the lack of transitional species in the fossil record, macroevolution has more problems as a theory regarding the origins of life than many allow.¹

Along similar lines, it often is argued by materialists and atheists that Scripture cannot be truthful on the grounds that it contains supernatural events which, it is alleged, are intrinsically at variance with science and human reason. We have already seen in a previous chapter that this is an absurd argument. Science deals with temporal, finite causes which are observable and quantifiable. Miracles and other supernatural events occur because the supernatural God, who cannot be seen or limited, can transcend the laws of nature as He so chooses. Allowing that miraculous events have occurred in the past does not call into question the rational causal order of the universe. Rather, the entire point of a miracle is that it is an exception to the rule of imminent causation, thereby validating this natural causal order and the ability of the sciences to investigate it.

On another level, though, we should note that the atheist argument for the incompatibility of the Bible and science is ultimately self-contradictory. First, there is a growing body of historical evidence that Christianity and the Bible made the Scientific Revolution possible.² Only by believing in a God who created the world out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo) according to a rational plan could science work conceptually.³ Although the Greeks did engage in some science, by the Pax Romana classical science essentially had stalled.⁴ And science was possible for the Greeks only because their philosophy often posited a rational or divine principle underlying and organizing the chaotic matter of the universe (prime mover, demiurge, logos, etc.). Still, since at its deepest level nature remained chaotic, one could argue that science and rationality could go only so far in explaining it. Only a doctrine of creation ex nihilo as taught by the Bible, where God’s rationality determines nature all the way down to its deepest level, could provide a stable and consistent basis for science.

To be continued…..

Part 1 available here; Part 2 available here; Part 3 available here; and Part 5 available here

[1] See Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York: Free Press, 1996); David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions (New York: Basic Books, 2009); and Philip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2010).

[2] Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), 121–200.

[3] Stark, For the Glory of God, 176–77.

[4] David Bentley Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and Its Fashionable Enemies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 67.

Adapted from Jack D. Kilcrease, Holy Scripture, Confessional Lutheran Dogmatics, Gifford A. Grobien, ed. (Fort Wayne, IN: The Luther Academy, 2020), 115-116.

Image from Richard Beck, “Creation Ex Nihilo,” Experimental Theology, April 23, 2019, http://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2019/04/creation-ex-nihilo.html.