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WHETHER GOD CAN BE STUDIED

Is the Study of God Possible?

The study of God can only be an inquiry that fallible, finite human beings undertake. God does not study theology, for God already knows his own mind with full adequacy, and without needing our words or expert phrases about him (John of Damascus, OF 1.1.2; Wesley, WJW 6:338).

Insofar as we speak any words at all about God’s coming into our presence, we speak in fragile language about that knowledge we as creatures have of the infinite divine reality, however patchy that might be (Dionysius, Div. Names 1).

All talk of God occurs within the limits of finitude and out of a community of prayer. That community lives within an ever-flowing stream of time. It passes through many languages, national histories, and cultural memories. No human knower sees as God sees. We must employ human speech if we are to speak at all of this One about whom any speech is always inadequate, yet so important (Augustine, On Chr. Doctrine 1.6–13; Luther, Bondage of the Will 12).

Hence there is an element of comedy about any talk of God. The life of grace delights in its contradictions (Kierkegaard, Concl. Unsci. Post.: 250–70). For we are striving with all our might to talk about that which is finally quite indescribable—indeed, ineffable! (Dionysius, Div. Names 1.1; John of Damascus, OF 1.1). Nonetheless, we keep on trying to say a little better whatever we can about this incomparable reality that we actually know and meet in our own hearts, and in the history of Jesus, and in universal history. It often seems as if it would be more conscionable to give up speaking at all. But that would require the end of discipline, of teaching, of preaching, of baptism and of all hymnody except humming.

Christian Theology Emerges out of Christian Community

The intellectual enterprise that we call Christian theology is an activity that occurs within the precincts of a worshiping community. That is precisely what distinguishes it from psychology of religion and philosophy of religion—legitimate disciplines that differ in method and subject matter from theology. Islamic theology begins within the framework of Islamic prayer, law, and community life. Jewish theology begins within a community of remembrance and expectation. So does Christian theology emerge precisely within a community whose “life lies hidden with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3; Ambrose, Paradise 29). When we inquire seriously into Christian teaching, we normally do so as baptized members of the body of Christ—thus as communicants, worshipers, and recipients of the gospel—or as inquirers who wish to know what the church teaches (Augustine, Catech. Instr. 1, 2).

God has committed his revelation to the custody of the continuing apostolic community under the guidance of the Spirit (Simplicius, The Necessity of Guarding the Faith, Epis. to Acacius, SCD 159). The Bible is the church’s book, lodged within the church for safekeeping and to continue to inspire and instruct the faithful (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 3.4). It is the church (not the university) that has for centuries kept it, translated it, studied it, meditated upon it, and repeatedly looked to it for daily guidance. The Holy Writ given to the church has spawned a lively history of religious ideas, theories, concepts, and symbols (Eusebius, CH 6).

The eternal truth of Christian teaching must be spoken anew within various historical circumstances. The idea of an evolution of Christian language is hardly inimical to Christian orthodoxy, but precisely in line with the intent of orthodoxy, which prays that God’s Spirit will spawn ever-new communities in each new historical context, language, and symbol system, each faithful to the truth of classic Christian teaching (Augustine, On Chr. Doctrine, prologue 1.1). The achievement of orthodoxy was never in making all believers look exactly alike. Rather it sought to engender life in Christ in speakers of varied languages. It prayed that the good news of God’s coming into human history might be rightly known by all participants in human history (Vincent of Lérins, Comm. 23; Newman, Development of Chr. Doctrine). This required learning the world’s languages.

Orthodoxy

The term orthodoxy—that least modern of all words—is largely a product of the classical Christian tradition. Orthodox means “right opinion” (orthos + doxa), or “sound doctrine,” especially religious teaching, and more particularly that teaching which holds closely to the Christian faith as formulated by the earliest classic Christian teachers. An opinion is orthodox if it is congruent with the apostolic faith.

In order to achieve multigenerational continuity, societies require persuasive legitimation and thoughtful tradition maintenance. Examples of secular orthodoxies that have achieved temporary continuity and still survive marginally (especially in universities) are Freudian, Marxian, and behaviorist. While these have barely survived a hundred years, classic Christianity has survived for two thousand.

Since the second century, Christianity has been called upon to answer challenges to its faith. These came from novel, experimental, and often distorted views of its own apostolic witness. It became necessary to defend Christian teaching. The faithful had to respond to toxic challenges both from within and without (Hippolytus, Refutation of All Her. 10). The defense of the faith to those outside the community was called apologetics (2 Tim. 2:24–26; 1 Pet. 3:15; Justin Martyr, First Apol. 13; Augustine, Letters 120). Its defense within the community was called sacred doctrine.

This has required repeated attempts to bring apostolic teaching into a consistent, balanced formulation within ever-changing cultural settings. We see this drive for balance and intellectual cohesion especially in the case of Cyril of Jerusalem’s Catechetical Lectures and John of Damascus On the Orthodox Faith. Classic Christian teachers labored to bring into ordered unity and equilibrium all the doctrines of Christian teaching according to the consensual affirmations of the early ecumenical councils of Christian leaders and teachers (OF 1.1, Cyril of Jerusalem, Procatechesis; Rufinus, On the Creed; Peter Lombard, Four Books of Sentences).

Although the terms orthodox and catholic and ecumenical have built up modern connotations that they did not have in the first millennium, I am using these terms as they were used in the first millennium: orthodox is sound doctrine in accord with apostolic teaching, catholic is “according to the whole” [church], and ecumenical is the whole world. Classic consensual Christian teaching uses all three terms not as simply equivalents but as references to the whole church.

Postmodern Orthodoxy

In the mid-seventies when academic theology was in a wildly feral mood, I take responsibility for being the first to employ a term that at the time was puzzling to many but later widely valued as a description—an oxymoronic term—“postmodern orthodoxy.” This described autobiographically what had been happening to me personally in the late sixties and early seventies. This was a decade before “post-modernity” became a headline buzzword among academics. At that time the term postmodern was largely used by a handful of architects and a few linguists. It had hardly intruded into the sanctum of theology. In the academic ethos of the seventies, any talk of “orthodoxy” was regarded as unthinkable in a self-respecting university, and especially in avant garde theological schools. This period spawned a large shelf of pseudo-lofty tomes on theological method, but very little that was solidly grounded in classic Christian teaching.

I have found no instance where the terms “postmodern” and “orthodoxy” were juxtaposed in published form before 1979 in Agenda for Theology where I employed it to describe a unexpected reversal in my own journey. I was trying to point to a classic consensual form of then embryonic theological reasoning that was already (against all expectations) living out of the conditions of the collapse of modernity (not the legitimation or triumph of modernity!—which “postmodern” later came unsuitably to signify).

Orthodoxy is post-modern if it has seriously passed through and dealt with the possibilities and limits of modern consciousness on its pilgrimage through the third millennium. This is a pilgrimage that has in fact brought about a rediscovery of the early Christian consensual tradition. Since the seventies I have been hungering and thirsting for classic consensual Christian wisdom. I have found it abundantly in the texts of classic Christian exegesis, pastoral care, liturgy, ethics, and theology. After Harper Collins published this Agenda, letters began pouring in to assure me that many others were going through a similar unexpected reversal from form-critical liberalism to orthodoxy, but had not yet found language for it. These voices grew into the “young fogeys” of the eighties who were at first interested especially in the comic contradictions of academic theology.

Classic Christianity views modernity from the point of view of its historical dissolution. We have already witnessed in the turn of the third millennium the further precipitous deterioration of social processes under the tutelage of autonomous individualism, narcissistic hedonism, and naturalistic reductionism. These are the key features of despairing modern consciousness. There is a growing hunger for means of social stabilization, continuity, parenting, intergenerational tradition maintenance, and freedom from the repressions of modernity. Postmodern orthodoxy is Christian teaching that, having passed through a deep engagement with the failed ideologies of modernity, has rediscovered the vitality of the ancient ecumenical Christian tradition.

The term “postmodern” later became very commonly abused in the 1990s by carrying the opposite meaning, as if modernity had transcended all continuities in history. The point: I have never used post-modern orthodoxy in any sense than its ironic-oxymoronic sense. By 1989 in After Modernity What?, I was preferring the term “post-critical orthodoxy” due to these abuses. In this 2009 revised edition of the earlier Systematic Theology of 1987–93, I am attempting to restate more prudently the basic intent of Agenda for Theology consistent with conditions that now prevail thirty years later, yet more textually grounded and sober about the urgent need for sustaining the truth of classic Christian reasoning.

Teaching the One Faith to Many Cultures

In spite of all limitations, we simply must study God, because God has touched our lives and has become our very life. There is no period of Christian history in which the attempt to study God has been completely disregarded or has entirely ceased, and no period when it has been more urgently needed than at the outset of the third millennium.

Christianity has long assumed a profound moral requirement that believers should learn to think and teach consistently about God, and that they should teach nothing contrary to that which has been revealed in universal history as seen by the apostolic teaching as consensually received. Out of this imperative has come the development of many variant systems of Christian teaching, intended both to teach converts and to defend against error, while holding strictly to the classic Christian consensus, variously called orthodox, catholic or ecumenical.

Systematic or basic theology is a slowly developing expansion of what Luke called “the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42), teaching “built upon the foundation of the apostles” (Eph 2:20; Marius Victorinus, Epis. to Eph 2:20). Its most primitive forms were baptismal creeds, catechetical teaching, preaching, letters, and expository and pastoral theology aimed at edification.

The New Testament assumed that there was a “unity inherent in our faith” (Eph. 4:13; Chrysostom, Hom. on Eph. Hom 9,10) that undergirded all the differences of perspectives and gifts that the apostolic witnesses brought to it. Each personally stamped account of the meaning of Jesus’ ministry—those of John, Paul, Peter, James, Luke, Mark, and others—was marked with distinct characteristics of its author under divine inspiration. Despite differences of language, syntax, and cultural situation, however, all these apostles understood themselves to be proclaiming the same Lord, united in the same faith, and not different gospels. The earliest Christian teachers did not think that these teachings were their own personal innovations, but revelations made possible by God’s grace, as Paul specifically stated: “I must make it clear to you, my friends, that the gospel you heard me preach is no human invention. I did not take it over from any man; no man taught it to me; I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ” (Gal. 1:11, 12).

To those who asserted the body of Christ could be divided, Paul countered: “Surely Christ has not been divided among you! Was it Paul who was crucified for you? Was it in the name of Paul that you were baptized?” (1 Cor. 1:13; Tertullian, On Baptism 15; Chrysostom, Hom. on 1 Cor., Hom. 3.5). During the earliest centuries the unity of the church was remarkably well preserved by the guidance of the Spirit even amid and through ruthless political repression, persecution, harassment, and false claims of revelation.

The Unity of the Apostolic Classic Consensus

The unity of the classic Christian consensus was textually expressed by the ecumenical councils and defined by the three creeds most widely affirmed in the Christian world:

• the Apostles’ Creed, which expanded the baptismal formula;
• the Nicene Creed, which defined the triune teaching; and
• the “Athanasian” or Quiqunque Creed, which more precisely set forth the sonship of Christ.

These consensual affirmations did not arise out of speculation or philosophical debates. Rather, they emerged out of a baptizing, worshiping community that stood accountable to apostolic teaching while being repeatedly challenged by alternative false teachings. Though not a perfectly received consensus, these coherently triune and mutually confirming confessions allowed the church to proceed for the next millennium on the basis of ecumenically established definitions considered definitive for all Christian teaching of all times.

The creeds were not catholic because a majority of bishops decided they were, but because they were guided by the Spirit to express the most common conviction and experience of lay Christian believers everywhere (Vincent of Lérins, Comm. 27.38). Had this doctrinal defense not been undertaken, the church would later have been faced with having to struggle ever anew against non-apostolic distortions of God as revealed. These would eventually have made great differences in the practical life, organization, ethics, and teaching of the church. The church had to protect itself from becoming captivated by various philosophical, political, and religious schools (Hippolytus, Refutation of All Her. 10.2).

The Christian community has always been a learning and teaching community, concerned with the unity, coherence, and internal consistency of its reflection upon God’s self-disclosure (Matt. 28:19, 20; John 21:15–17; Cyril of Alex., Comm. on John, 12.1). Jesus himself was a remarkable teacher, and the pastoral office that has patterned itself after him remains intrinsically a teaching ministry, in addition to serving in priestly and prophetic offices.

The concise account of apostolic activity found in Acts 2:42 reveals a pattern familiar to early Christian communities: “They met constantly to hear the apostles teach, and to share the common life, to break bread, and to pray.” This still remains a rough sketch of the core spheres of activity of the Christian community: first, teaching, then the nurturing of community through sacramental life, and prayer. If the church’s teaching is deficient, then its fellowship, sacrament, and worship are likely to suffer from that deficiency (John Cassian, Conference 2.15.1).

The primary mandate of the church is not to teach miscellaneous opinions about psychology, politics, or sociology that are not derived from the church’s unique gift: revelation in Christ. The church has received authorization to teach nothing contrary to that which has been delivered and received consensually through the history of revelation.

Beyond that the mandate to teach is best viewed modestly. On the one hand, theology does not serve well by attempting to feed as a parasite on all the other disciplines of the university, as if it had nothing of its own to say. On the other hand, theology does even worse when it seeks to imperialize the various disciplines, imagining that it knows more about biology than biologists, and more about medicine than physicians, and more about the economy than the economists.

Revelation Requires Scripture, Tradition, Experience, and Reason

By what authority or on what ground does Christian teaching rest? How does the worshiping community know what it professes to be true?

The study of God relies constantly upon an interdependent matrix of sources on the basis of which the confessing community can articulate, make consistent, and integrate the witness to revelation. These four are scripture, tradition, experience, and reason, all of which depend upon and exist as a response to their necessary premise: revelation. All are functionally present in the most representative of classical Christian teachers, notably: Irenaeus, Chrysostom, Ambrose, Augustine, and John of Damascus.

Revelation—The Primary Premise of the Christian Study of God

Each phase of the classic fourfold approach to the study of God hinges on the unswerving central premise of revelation: that God has made himself known (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 3). God has not concealed but revealed the divine will, love, and mercy through a palpable historical process. Anyone who carefully examines the course of universal history may experience the sweep of that revelation (Pss. 33:9; 40:5; 105:5; 126:2, 3; Augustine, CG 18; Pannenberg, Revelation as History).

Jewish and Christian reasoning about God characteristically looks at the whole of history, viewing history itself as the arena of God’s activity and of human responses to it. This history tells a unique story that forms the memory of the worshiping community. It tells of creation, of the fall, of a flood, a covenant, an exodus, a captivity, and a crucifixion and resurrection, a Spirit-bestowed church and an expected judgment. By looking intently upon that history, any discerning mind can see that the whole fabric of events reveals the presence, reality, power, and character of God (Tertullian, Ag. Marcion 3; Augustine, On Psalms 90). The giver of history is known through history (Augustine, CG 16).

As new events occur in ever-emergent history, their meanings are illumined, in this community, by reflection out of that primary revelatory event and its Revealer, Jesus as the Christ. The worshiping community is constantly reflecting upon each new phase or moment of history in relation to that original event of revelation.

This mode of reasoning was familiar to the Hebraic community prior to Jesus, where past revelatory events such as exodus and captivity became the lens of understanding out of which the history of Jesus was interpreted. This is a distinctively Hebraic mode of thinking: “When your son asks you in time to come, ‘What is the meaning of the precepts, statutes, and laws which the Lord our God gave you?’ you shall say to him, “We were Pharaoh’s slaves in Egypt, and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with his strong hand,” (Deut. 6:20–22; Rom. 3:21–31; Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 4.21). In this way the recollection of a real history is the basis of knowledge of God’s revelation, which occurs in events, not by spawning ideas.

This is the central hypothesis of the Christian way of studying God: that through Christ the Revealer of God, we see into the meaning of other events from beginning to end. Jesus Christ is that single page in the novel where the clue to the whole story is found, the crucial moment in the historical process in which the part reveals the whole. Through this particular lens, we come to know the One who is unsurpassably good, the One who is the ground of our being, who gives life, in whom all things cohere (Col. 1:3–20; Tertullian, Ag. Marcion 5.19; Augustine, Letters 185.1–5). It is out of participation in that event that Christian community continues to come alive, proclaim God’s word, celebrate life together, and partake of the sacramental life that brings the community again in communion with that Word (Ignatius, To the Ephesians 6).

Four Resources in the Study of the Revealed God

Christian Scripture, Christian tradition, Christian reasoning, and Christian experience all exist in response to God’s historical revelation in Israel and Jesus Christ. This may be pictured as follows:

 

Sources for the Study of God

	Revelations		Scripture		Tradition		Experience		Reason
	Out of the Word Revealed Comes		Out of the Word Written Comes		Out of the Word Remembered Comes		Out of the Word Personally and Socially Experienced Comes		Out of the Word Made Intelligible Comes
	Knowledge		Witness		Church		Life in Christ		Theology

 

The sources of the study of God are in this way seen in a sequence that moves from originative event (Christ the Revealer of God the Father) as proclaimed by the community, to the record of the earliest proclamation (written word), to the traditioning—or “passing along,” paradosis, transmission—of that word intergenerationally through time (tradition), which elicits personal and social awareness and experience of the salvation event (experience), which then becomes the basis of the reflection required to think consistently about the meaning of the salvation event (reason)—each layer depending on the previous one (Clement of Alex., Strom. 6.10; Augustine, Chr. Doctr. 4.21; Tho. Aq., SCG 1.9; Calvin, Inst. 1.6, 7; 3.20; Hooker, Laws of Eccl. Polity 3.8).

The Preached Word Precedes the Written Word

The oral tradition of apostolic preaching preceded the written tradition of New Testament Scripture. That is the proper sense in which it is rightly said that the tradition of preaching stands chronologically prior to Scripture. The unwritten oral apostolic tradition was a preached word, a teaching of the living church prior to the writing down of New Testament Scripture. Apostolic preaching itself is a product of oral tradition, taken, like a still photo of a moving picture, and frozen at one crucial point, so that the original oral witness to revelation could be transmitted to subsequent generations.

But after the first generation of witnesses, the church viewed the transmission of tradition from the vantage point that assumes Scripture as already having been written and ever thereafter funding and enabling new embodiments of the same apostolic teaching (Conf. of Dositheus, CC: 485–516; Heidelberg Catech. COC 3; Tavard, Holy Church, Holy Writ).

Paul was referring to the apostolic tradition he had received and passed on when he wrote: “Stand firm, then brothers, and hold fast to the traditions which you have learned from us by word or by letter” (2 Thess. 2:15). “By word” refers to the preached word, whereas “by letter” refers to epistles and gospel narratives (Basil, On the Spirit 29.71). Until Mark, Paul, John, and others began to write their Gospels and letters, there existed much lively preaching and oral tradition, but as yet only minimal written tradition in addition to Hebrew scripture (Chrysostom, Catech. Lect. 5.12). The written apostolic tradition emerged only when the oral tradition was in danger of losing some of its immediacy and authority through the impending deaths of the eyewitnesses. The writing down of that witness made the revelation more exact and transmissible to subsequent generations through a continuous succession of ministries of preaching and teaching.

Scripture Funds Tradition, Reason, and Experience

A constant equilibrium of these four interdependent resources is required in order to receive and reflect upon revelation: Scripture, tradition, experience, and reason. All four are grounded in, responsive to, and springing out of historical revelation.

Revelation remains the precondition of all four basic sources of the study of God. Revelation is that from which the whole subject matter proceeds. There could be no Christian study of God without God’s own initiative to become reliably known (Gen. 35:7; Ps. 98:2; Isa. 65:1; Rom. 1:18; 16:25, 26; Rev. 1:1, Origen, Ag. Celsus 3.61).

The phrase “interdependent four-sided matrix of sources” is in some traditions termed a quadrilateral method, referring to four bulwarks of defense of Christian teaching, which if constructed within these walls will provide the worshiping community with a secure and true apostolic identity. A more dynamic picture of these same Christian sources is that of flowing wellsprings cascading through Christian history.

Since this study lives out of the classic consensus, we will utilize the ancient ecumenical (patristic) sources more than modern sources, as we ask how revelation both empowers and requires a written word (Scripture), a remembering community (tradition), an appropriation process (experience), and internal consistency (reason).

The method we are employing here was intuitively familiar to the primitive worshiping community. It became increasingly clear to ancient ecumenical teachers during the first four centuries, but we do not find augmented explanations of it until Augustine, Vincent of Lérins, and Peter Lombard, and then much more explicitly in the Reformation and modern periods. The medieval synthesis held together revelation and reason as mediated by the conciliar tradition’s interpretations of Scripture. The Reformation again asserted the written word as primary source of theology, yet strongly avowed the ancient ecumenical consensus provided that it could be shown to be consistent with canonical Scripture.

It was not until the development of eighteenth-century pietism that the personal experience of salvation again received the more explicit attention that had been paid to it in fourth-century theology (the Cappadocians, Chrysostom, and Augustine) and early monasticism (Pachomius, Basil, and John Cassian). For a functional view of this method, it is best seen as operating in the liturgies of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions of prayer through the hours of the day, and notably in the Anglican formularies, the Homilies, the Book of Common Prayer, the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, the works of Cranmer, Jewel, Hooker, Taylor, and Wesley, as well as in Scholastic Lutherans like Gerhard, and in Reformed teachers like A. J. Niemeyer.

Scripture: The Written Word.

Divinely inspired Scripture is the chief source and norm of Christian theology. Why is a written word required, if God is revealed in history? Because the written word preserves and triggers memory.

After the resurrection and before the writing down of the New Testament documents, many in the primitive Christian community expected the historical process to be concluded quickly (Mark 13:32–37). They assumed that an end time was eminent. But as history surprisingly continued, this community slowly began to realize that it needed to write down its message as historical experience continued to be extended for an indefinite (though limited) duration. If emerging generations were to be addressed with this invaluable message, this would require writing down the history of Jesus the Revealer, and of the first generation of witnesses to him (Luke 1:1–4; Acts 1:1–5; John 21:23–25; Chrysostom, Hom. on John 88.2). After the death of the original eyewitnesses, Scripture is the primary written access of believers to the history of revelation (Chrysostom, Hom. on Acts 1). Tradition is simply the history of the exegesis of Scripture. The process of passing along the tradition must occur ever again in each new historical circumstance (Quinisext Synod, canon 19).

The New Testament contains these writings that survived—documents that ultimately went through a complex intergenerational process of being transmitted, read in public worship, studied avidly, interpreted through preaching, analyzed, and finally in due time authorized as being ecumenically received credible witnesses to this revealing Word (Gregory of Nyssa, Answer to Eunomius, 2). Already the Hebrew Bible was viewed by Christians as divinely inspired Holy Writ. To these documents were added the New Testament—those narratives and letters authorized to be read aloud in Christian congregational worship all over the known world.

The New Testament became formally canonized as Holy Writ (Athanasius, Festal Letters). It was valued among Christians as highly as the books of law, prophets, and wisdom, which it fulfilled and explained. The New Testament included letters, instructional documents, and accounts of Jesus’ ministry, written in the first century.

The prime criterion for authorization was authenticity of apostolic authorship. This canonization process was accomplished by a living, growing, human historical community, by the consenting church in ecumenical concurrence, utilizing the best historical information available to it (Tertullian, Prescript. Ag. Her. 15–44; Apost. Const., “Eccl. Canons,” 85; Councils of Alexandria, Carthage, Hippo). It took several centuries for this process of consensual formation to develop into an accepted canon of apostolic tradition. By the fourth century virtually all dioceses of Christian believers had basically agreed upon those documents that were universally accepted as apostolic tradition (Synod of Laodicea, canon LIX). Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox traditions have all agreed on the central premise that Scripture is the primary source and guideline for Christian teaching, although differences emerged on the status of the deutro-canonical Apocrypha (“hidden” writings included in the Greek Septuagint). Both Testaments are received by the church as sacred writing (Council of Rome, SCD 84), as depositum of faith inspired by God the Spirit (Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus, SCD 1951), to be guarded and handed down by the church and interpreted in the light of the consensus of the ancient ecumenical teachers (SCD 786) and the sense of the church, according to sound principles (Pius X, Lamentabili, SCD 2001).

The Bible, composed of two sets of testimonies or covenants (Old and New), is the deposit of the sufficient and adequate witness to God’s self-disclosure. Other valued sources of the study of God—tradition, reasoning, and experience—remain essentially dependent upon and responsive to Scripture, since they must appeal to Scripture for the very events, interpretations, and data they are remembering, upon which they reflect, and out of which their experience becomes transformed. Scripture remains the central source of the memories, symbol systems, hopes, teachings, metaphors, and paradigms by which the community originally came into being and has continually refreshed and renewed itself (African Code, canon 24). Christianity differs from Judaism primarily in that it is not still looking for that fundamental messianic event to disclose the meaning of history. It remembers that event as having occurred in the ministry of Jesus, whose living presence is received and experienced in Holy Communion and the preached Word (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho; R. Niebuhr, NDM 1.1).

Each Scripture text is best received, understood and interpreted in the light of its relation to the Bible as a whole. All texts are open to be illuminated by both scholarly historical inquiry and by reverential personal insight under the guidance of the Spirit (Origen, Hom. on Numbers, 27; Augustine, The Spirit and the Letter).

The Spirit’s witness does not completely cease with the canonization of Scripture, but continues by providing a guiding light for the benefit of consensus formation and personal experience. New events emerge in the ongoing historical processes that are to be understood in the light of the word made known in Scripture. Yet no fundamentally new or different knowledge is required for the saving knowledge of God than that which is revealed in Scripture (Council of Rome, SCD 84: 33, 34; Westminster Conf. 1.1–10).

Tradition: The Word Remembered

The teaching office given to the church requires transmission of the history of the events of God’s self-disclosure to subsequent generations without distortion. This multi-generation task of accurate transmission in all its oral and written forms is called tradition—the passing along (paradosis or transmission) of apostolic teaching from parents to children, generation to generation.

The proper use of tradition, as Jews and Christians have lived it out concretely, is a vital social reality. Its task is to receive and transmit the history of revelation. The task has sometimes been wrongly conceived or implemented, so as to convey archaic traditionalism or rigid formulas or in-group biases that do not adequately convey the vitality of the sacred writings. Tradition invites not only written and spoken words. It wants to be danced, sung, feasted upon, and celebrated, as in a Bar Mitzvah or wedding. Tradition is shared in a social process through seasonal celebrations and the recollection of mighty events (Quinisext Synod 66).

Christians have a complex history of their own. In each new developing historical situation, believers have come to discover, reformulate, and restate in their own language the unchanging revealed Word. These ever-new formulations of each new period of the tradition’s reflection about revelation continue to live out of Scripture. Each one is new, since historical experience is ever new (Gelasius, Decretal, SCD 164–166).

Fruitful experiences of previous Christian communities are awaiting fresh assimilation into the apostolate by contemporary believing communities. Contemporary believers stand, not at the beginning of history, but amid it, and not as isolated individuals but with a community of prayer and song and story that has stored a mass of data about the lively experiences of an actual risk-taking historical community (Apost. Const., Eccl. Canons). Only the narrowest individualism would imagine that every believer must begin from nothing, as if no others had ever had any experience of God.

Classic writers have one distinct advantage over modern sources: they have already been thoroughly tested, questioned, probed, analyzed, and utilized in different historical situations. Modern interpretation does well to build upon that extensive examination. The gospel has been expressed with greater fullness and clarity in some centuries than in others. Some brilliant insights into scriptural truth have had to await “their century” for a hearing.

Theology builds progressively upon previous generations of the study of God, using stores of wisdom both old and new (Matt. 13:52; Augustine, Sermon 74.5). Rediscovered insights into Scripture and tradition keep coming to the attention of the church at unexpected times (Cyril of Alexandria, Fragment 172, Reuss, MKGK 209). Each age has the possibility of contributing something to the storehouse for subsequent ages that will study God, yet that fact does not imply that the received faith itself is being substantively changed from generation to generation (Simplicius, The Unchangeableness of Chr. Doctrine, SCD 160).

The Word Experienced

The Spirit speaking through the Scripture awakens in us the awareness of God’s revelation in history, allowing us to recollect and participate in attested events that bestow meaning on the whole of history. The vast range of experiences, metaphors, symbols, and recollections of a historical community become accessible to later generations. We are invited to correlate our personal experience with the social and historical continuum of the faithful (Deut. 6:20–25).

It is misleading to pit tradition against experience, since tradition is precisely the continuing memory of this vast arena of social and historical experiencing. There is a profound affinity between the community’s tradition and our personal experience: one is historical-social-ecclesial and the other is personal-individuated-unique, yet both are forms of embodiment of life in Christ. What was once someone else’s experience becomes a part of my own experience. Christian teaching seeks to enable this community’s experience to become personally validated and authenticated as my own (Wesley, WJW 1: 470; 5:128; 8:1; Buber, The Hasidic Masters; Herberg, Faith Enacted in History).

If a corporately remembered experience is to become personally appropriated, it must be or become congruent with one’s own concrete experience, with what one is feeling. The integration of the tradition into one’s own feeling process most powerfully occurs in worship. Christian teaching does not simply reflect on corporate memory as an abstract or distant datum, but, rather, seeks to integrate social memory congruently within one’s own feelings (Basil, On the Spirit 28).

Experience is to the individual as tradition is to the historical church. Both are enlivened by the Spirit. Experience seeks to enable the personal appropriation of God’s mercy in actual, interpersonal relationships. Faith becomes personal trust appropriated in a disciplined and responsive way of life, sharing the love and mercy of God with whomever possible (Clement of Alex., Strom. 2.2).

Any truth that does not connect with personal experience is likely to remain opaque to the single individual, no matter how clear it may be to all others. A truth that has not become a truth for me (Kierkegaard, Concl. Unsci. Post.) is not likely to bear up through crises. The personal side of theology is effective when daily life is providing experiential evidences of the reliability of faith’s witness. This does not imply, however, that personal experience may unilaterally judge and dismiss Scripture and tradition. Scripture and tradition are received, understood, and validated through personal experience, but not arbitrated or censored by it. Rather Scripture and tradition amid the living, worshiping community are the means by which and context in which one’s personal experiences are evaluated (1 John 4:4; 1 Cor. 4:3, 4; James 3:1; Tertullian, Prescript. Ag. Her. 33; Oecumenius, Comm. on James, 1:19).

Reason: The Word Made Intelligible

The fourth bulwark of the quadrilateral stronghold is reason. Willingness to apply critical reasoning to all that has been asserted is required in order to avoid self-contradiction, to take appropriate account of scientific and historical knowledge, and to see the truth as a whole and not as disparate parts (Ambrose, Duties 1.24–28). The study of God is a cohesive, rational task of thinking out of revelation. Faith does not cease being active as it undertakes the process of rigorous thinking. One need not disavow the gifts of intellect in giving thought to their Giver (John Cassian, Conferences, First and Second Conferences of Abbot Moses).

Right use of reason in Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant traditions resists the overextension of the claim of reason. Reason must not imagine itself as either omnicompetent or incompetent. The Christian tradition does not characteristically view reason as autonomous, as if completely separable from other relational, historical, and social modes of knowing the truth. Reason, rather, seeks to provide for religious discernment some appropriate tests of cogency and internal consistency (Theophilus, To Autolycus 1.3–2.4; Athenagoras, Plea for Christians 12–18). Reason explains, guards, and defends revealed truth (Qui pluribus, SCD 1635), and faith should not be thought of as contrary to right reason (Syllabus of Errors, SCD 1706).

The Christian study of God is, as Anselm taught, a faith that is seeking to understand itself (fides quaerens intellectum), a faith that is in search of its own intrinsic intelligibility in a way that respects mystery and knows its own limits. Christian teaching lives out of a community of faith that does not hesitate to ask serious questions about itself (Anselm, Proslog. 1). The knowledge we have of God is always a knowledge prone to potential distortions twisted by our own self-assertiveness, sin, evasions, and constricted vision.

We have limited competency to see even ourselves honestly, much less the whole of history. Nevertheless, the study of God proceeds with the powerful resources of Scripture as enlivened by the power of the Spirit, with candid admission of the recalcitrant egocentricity of the one seeking to know (Clement of Alex., Strom. 2.10–19). The study of God requires intellectual effort, historical imagination, empathic energy, and participation in a vital community of prayer (Augustine, Answer to Skeptics).

As the Word becomes proclaimed and heard, we appropriate it amid changing cultural experiences, reflect upon it by reason, and personally rediscover it in our own experience. The study of God best proceeds with the fitting equilibrium of these resources. The best minds of the historical Christian tradition, such as Origen, Gregory of Nazianzus, Augustine, Anselm, and Calvin, all utilized this equilibrium of sources in a functional, interdependent balance.

Creedal Tradition as an Authoritative Source for the Study of God

The Rule of Faith

The rule of faith (regula fidei) defines what is to be believed as necessary for salvation. The Bible contains all that is necessary to be believed, and the church is commissioned to teach nothing less than that faith revealed in Scripture (Second Helvetic Conf.; Tavard, Holy Writ and Holy Church). The creed is derived closely from the whole course and gist Scripture (Luther, Brief Explanation, WML 2). The rule of faith is summarized in the baptismal confession.

An article of faith must be based upon revelation, stated in Scripture, and ecclesiastically defined with ecumenical consent (Gallican Conf., COC 3; Vincent of Lérins, Comm. 2, 20–24). Teachings that lack any of these conditions are matters of opinion left open for continued debate and speculation. The room for individual opinion among Christians is vast, provided those opinions are not repugnant to the rule of faith and charity (Chrysostom, Hom. on 2 Tim, 2–3).

Nothing is required of any believer other than that which is revealed by God through Scripture as necessary to salvation, as believed consensually by the Christian community as an article of faith reliably received by common ecumenical consent. The task of Christian teaching is to clarify, illuminate, cohesively interpret, and defend the convictions distinctive to Christianity that empower and enable the Christian life (Mark 7:4–9; 1 John 2:12–14).

Upholding the Earliest Apostolic Tradition

Timothy was instructed: “Keep before you an outline of the sound teaching which you heard from me, living by the faith and love which are ours in Christ Jesus. Guard the treasure put into our charge, with the help of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us” (2 Tim. 1:13, 14). The first task of the Christian teacher is to “hold fast” the sound teaching passed on from the apostles. Timothy was not at liberty to teach his own private opinions or prejudices. Paul had provided a living model (hypotypōsis) for the Christian leader to follow (Tertullian, On Prescript. Ag. Her. 25).

There are strong injunctions in the New Testament itself to carefully transmit the apostolic teaching. Jesus taught the disciples that the Spirit would be given to “guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13). Paul faithfully passed on the tradition he had received, which he regarded as unalterable data: “I handed on to you the facts which had been imparted to me; that Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Cor. 15:3). Paul regarded those in public ministry “as stewards of the secrets of God” who are “expected to show themselves trustworthy” in passing along the tradition (1 Cor. 4:1, 2). Timothy was implored to “keep safe that which has been entrusted to you. Turn a deaf ear to empty and worldly chatter, and the contradictions of the so-called “knowledge,” for many who lay claim to it have shot far wide of the faith” (1 Tim. 6:20, 21). Along with objective accuracy, there remains a personal element in the transmission of tradition: “Stand by the truths you have learned and are assured of. Remember from whom you learned them; remember that from early childhood you have been familiar with the sacred writings which have power to make you wise and lead you to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus” (2 Tim. 3:14, 15; Gal. 1:8, 9; Clement of Alex., Exhort. to the Heathen IX; Strom. 2.11, 12; Jerome, Letters 52.7).

Humanly devised traditions that claimed to be divine revelation (among New Testament examples are detailed food or Sabbath prohibitions) were resisted and not confused with the divinely revealed tradition received from the apostles. “Do not let your minds be captured by hollow and delusive speculations, based on traditions of man-made teaching and centered on the elemental spirits of the universe and not on Christ” (Col. 2:8; 1 Tim. 1:4). Jesus rebuked the Pharisees because they neglected the commandment of God “in order to maintain the tradition of men” (Mark 7:8; Tertullian, On the Soul 1–2; On Prescript Ag. Her. 7). But the godly tradition concerning the memory of Jesus Christ must be maintained accurately and faithfully, since it is the living memory of God’s own coming to humanity (Chrysostom, Hom. on Gal. 1.6).

The Didache enjoined readers to keep what had been received without adding or subtraction. Irenaeus (Ag. Her. 3.4.3) and Tertullian (On Prescript. Ag. Her. 29–35) thought that all heresies would be easily recognizable by their habit of making innovations upon the received the original apostolic tradition. Clement of Alexandria argued that the apostolic tradition was prior to heresy (Strom. 7.17). By searching the Scriptures any believer can compare later proposals for Christian understanding with the apostolic witness. Origen accepted as Christian teaching only that which had been taught by the apostles and mediated through accurate memory of tradition (OFP preface). Cyprian called Christ the fount of tradition (Epis. 73, 74). Antiquity of teaching, meaning the ancient teaching of the apostles, was one of the criteria of the Vincentian rule of faith (Lérins, Comm. 2–3). “The Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that by His revelation they might make known new doctrine, but that by His assistance they might inviolably keep and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith delivered through the apostles” (Vatican Council I, Constitution 1.4).

The importance of apostolic tradition is seen in a letter from Irenaeus to Florinus (in Eusebius, CH 5.20) in which Irenaeus remembered clearly that he had conversed personally with Polycarp, who himself had talked with the eyewitness John concerning the miracles and teachings of Jesus. Through only one intermediary, Irenaeus understood himself to be accurately and faithfully in touch with the original events of Christian revelation.

During the time in which Rome was the capital of the western world, it is not surprising that when local traditions were compared with one another and found to be somewhat different, localities would appeal to the Roman church to help them identify the truest form of the tradition. After all, people from all over the known world were meeting in Rome. Where better would there be a place to establish consensually the most authentic and consensual forms of traditioned memory? Thus the Roman memory of apostolic teaching came to have a widely respected value, along with Antioch, and Alexandria. In time the bishop of Rome came to have a widely acknowledged role as a crucial guardian of the apostolic tradition (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 3.3; Tertullian, On Prescript. Ag. Her. 21, 32–36). The churches spread across the Roman Empire appealed to Rome to maintain tradition accurately and to guard those documents that most accurately presented the original tradition. Even the heretics appealed to the apostolic tradition for their support, only to find their views in due time rejected by the church itself on behalf of the apostolic written testimony. The position of Rome as capital of the empire made it an obvious center for Christian guardianship, along with Alexandria representing Africa and Antioch representing Asia. Even at the height of its prominence, however, Rome was never without correctives from other quarters.

The authority of any ancient Christian writer has weight only to the degree that he by general consent accurately represented the mind of the whole church. No single voice taken alone can claim to carry every nuance of the full consent of the whole church in all things. However great Augustine may have been, his views of predestination were never fully received and often modified, so those particular views can hardly be regarded as having received the consent necessary for being viewed as ancient ecumenical consensual tradition. Vincent of Lérins argued that even the church’s greatest theologians may err, but these errors are in time corrected by the lack of consent (Comm. 10–11, 17, 28).

The strongest and surest medium of tradition is liturgy. Teaching is important, but not more so than the language of common prayer. The practices of baptism, Eucharist, Lord’s Day services, and many elements of the Christian year are powerful safeguards for the retention of the teachings of the apostles. Even if preachers were known to be heretical, as long as they celebrated Holy Communion and baptism in due order, the liturgy is not invalidated, and the rite itself performs the ironic task of contradicting what has been badly taught (Augustine, The Letters of Petilian, the Donatist 45, 82).

By this means it is made clear that the Holy Spirit again and again turns human pride and distortion to the praise of God. The church has been guided by God’s Spirit through many historical crises. New languages, concepts, and symbol systems have arisen repeatedly in the history of Christian teaching. For a time a disproportionate emphasis may have been given to one or another concept, but eventually all these concepts must stand the test of time and either be confirmed or rejected by the living ecumenical church under the guidance of the Spirit. The result is that by Scripture, creeds, transgenerational institutions, liturgy, and catechetical teaching, the Spirit continues to illuminate the mind of the church and to make the apostolic teaching recognizable.

Critical historical inquiry into Scripture and tradition is not antithetical to faith. Sound, probing criticism is constantly needed in order to discern the meaning of Scripture’s testimony to the meaning of history. The Holy Spirit uses this too, to burn away the dross, to blow away the chaff. We are called by the Spirit to test all things in relation to divine inspiration: “Do not stifle inspiration, and do not despise prophetic utterance, but bring them all to the test and then keep what is good in them and avoid the bad of whatever kind” (1 Thess. 5:21; Dionysius of Alex., Epistle 7).

The Councils Seek Ecumenical Consent

It is in the light of this long-term sifting and discerning process that the general councils of the church must be seen and understood. The superintending church leaders (episkopoi—bishops) were authorized by their anointing and by lay consent to speak officially for the church. Their authority never functionally operated independently of either lay consent or apostolic tradition—at least not for long. Their views would not be received if they were not rooted in the ancient faith or if they are contrary to the mind of the historic church as a whole.

General councils are not infallible in themselves, but the Spirit that guides the church is fully trustable. The evidence has been repeatedly reconfirmed by general consent that the ecumenical councils have been blessed by the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The councils have sought to define questions under dispute in the light of scriptural teaching. Sometimes the general councils have failed to gain consent, as in the case of the Arian Council of Ariminum (AD 359) or the Council of Ephesus (449) that temporarily approved the Eutychian heresy, only later to be corrected by the church consensus (at Chalcedon, 451). That consent is what lets the councils know the mind of the church, and thus whether the council’s decision was Spirit-led. A council’s decrees must be ratified or confirmed by ecumenical consent if they are to be regarded as established. When that consent over a long period of time is given, the council becomes received as ecumenical teaching and is viewed by the whole church as rightly defining the church’s teaching (Second Council of Nicaea, canon I). Conciliar decisions may remain unsettled for a very long time. Even while some questions are under suspended judgment, the church lives by Scripture, by its rule of faith and sacramental life, and by preaching.

Seven councils of the historic church are recognized as ecumenical councils, having the consent of the whole church over the largest span of time:

1. Nicaea, AD 325, defining the triune God in a way that rejected Arian claims;
2. Constantinople, AD 381, affirming Jesus’ humanity against Appollinarianism and the Spirit’s divinity against Macedonianism;
3. Ephesus, AD 431, affirming the unity of Christ’s Person, and Mary as theotokos, against the Nestorians;
4. Chalcedon, AD 451, affirming the two natures of Christ against Eutychianism;
5. the Second Council of Constantinople, AD 553, against Nestorianism;
6. the Third Council of Constantinople (680–681) against Monothelitism; and
7. the Second Council of Nicaea (787) against Iconoclasm (Gregory I, Pastoral Care; Epis. 9. 105, 10.13; Tanner, DEC I; for definitions of rejected views see EEC).

The Living Tradition

The events of history make known the revelation of the will of God. This revelation is made palpable and concrete by the giving of a sacred deposit, Holy Writ, to be kept intact, neither added to nor taken away from. Paul repeatedly stressed: “If anyone, if we ourselves or an angel from heaven, should preach a gospel at variance with the gospel we preached to you, he shall be held outcast” (Gal. 1:8, 9). Jude thought it had become “urgently necessary to write at once and appeal to you to join the struggle in defense of the faith, the faith which God entrusted to his people once and for all. It is in danger from certain persons who have wormed their way in” (Jude 3, 4). From these passages it is evident that the effort at consensual definition and unified defense of the heart of faith began very early in Christian experience and did not await the second or third century (Theophylact, Comm. on Jude, 3).

This tradition was to be handed down from generation to generation. “Guard the treasure put into our charge, with the help of the Holy Spirit dwelling within us” (2 Tim. 1:14). “You heard my teaching in the presence of many witnesses; put that teaching into the charge of men you can trust, such men as will be competent to teach others” (2 Tim. 2:2). At this time there were no systematic theologies, but only highly prized apostolic texts circulating from congregation to congregation, containing accounts of the life of Jesus, a short outline of the beginning of church history immediately after the crucifixion, and a series of letters and visions written by or on behalf of primary apostolic eyewitnesses (Tertullian, On Prescript. Ag. Her. 36–44; John of Damascus, Barlaam and Ioasaph 36.335).

As these writings were read, preached, and canonized, the church has continued to live out of them, generation by generation. Among the most fundamental consensual decisions of the church is the affirmation that the Spirit will not lead the church in any direction that is contrary to the delivered written word (Basil, On the Holy Spirit; Pius 4, SCD 930; J. Meyendorff, Living Tradition). The church lives out of the Spirit who called forth the testimony of scriptures. Those who insist upon expounding one Scripture in such a way that it is repugnant to another Scripture have not listened sufficiently to the one Spirit attesting the one Lord through the many voices of Scripture (Thirty-nine Articles XX). Scriptural arguments for teaching and discipling are best derived from a fair and careful comparison of all relevant texts of Scripture, heard in the light of the classic consensus (Augustine, Proceedings of Pelagius, 14.35). In this way the Bible is received as containing everything required to believe as an article of faith. The church keeps the book, learns from the book, and seeks to assess varied interpretations of the book in terms of total witness of the book itself.

Scripture and Tradition

Persecution Required an Oral Tradition

The written word of canonical scripture is to be openly proclaimed to all, but in addition to this some of the most revered early writers (notably Basil) assumed that the church had received a reliable oral apostolic tradition guarded through centuries of persecution by forced silence permeated by mystery.

Some otherwise fair-minded historians offer only grudging attention to this hounded, threatened, molested, countercultural tradition of hagiography and martyrdom that was so persecuted and despised that it could not even write things down but had to commit them to memory.

Among numerous examples of holy unwritten tradition mentioned by Basil are triune immersion, common prayer on the first day of the week, bending knees in prayer and the sign of the cross. In these cases there is no residue in the canon of scripture of a written apostolic tradition. But that absence did not diminish their authority during the first five centuries. These practices were received consensually as unwritten traditions from the apostles shrouded in silence “out of the reach of curious meddling and inquisitive investigation. Well had they learned the lesson that the awful dignity of the mysteries is best preserved by silence. What the uninitiated are not even allowed to look at was hardly likely to be publicly paraded about in written documents” (Basil, On the Spirit 27.66).

By analogy, Moses did not make all parts of the tabernacle open to all. Unbelievers did not enter at all, and the faithful were admitted only to its outer precincts. The Levites alone were allowed to serve in worship offering temple sacrifices. Only one priest was allowed to enter the holy of holies, and that only once each year.

Basil applied this analogy: “If, as in a Court of Law, we were at a loss of documentary [written] evidence, but were able to bring before you a large number of [oral] witnesses, would you not give your vote for our acquittal?” On this basis Basil cherished the phrase “with the Spirit” in the doxology “as a legacy left me by my fathers”—specifically citing Irenaeus, Clement, Origen, Dionysius of Rome, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Firmilian, Eusebius, and Julius Africanus. “Thus I apprehend, the powerful influence of tradition frequently impels men to express themselves in terms contradictory to their own opinions…How then can I be an innovator and creator of new terms.” Basil argued that memories and practices evidently familiar to those generations immediately following the apostles and “continued by long usage” should remain highly valued in Christian teaching (On the Spirit 3.29; Augustine, Letters).

Yet oral tradition, however precious, is always subject to uncertainty and speculation, as we have found in form-criticism. Thus the focus of orthodox Christian teaching remains fixed upon the written word and the early written documents interpreting that word. Meanwhile Basil still calls the worshiping community to listen attentively to those known oral and hagiographic traditions widely received as apostolic memory and practice, and not dismiss them quickly as if they had no value, as if modern readers could look only to documentary written evidences recognized under the rules of the game of reductionistic historical methods.

The Plain Sense of Scripture and Spiritual Interpretation

When conflicting interpretations of scripture arise, the classic rule of interpretation may be appealed to: “Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders, and they will explain to you” (Deut. 32:7, see also the proverb on “not removing ancient boundary stones; Prov. 22:28; Vincent of Lérins, Commonit. 21, 27). These boundary stones were consensually assumed to be firmly established in the early ecumenical councils and consensual exegetes, so that subsequently those who “rashly seek for novelties and expositions of another faith” were found wanting by general lay consent of “all the people” who say to these councils, “So be it, so be it [Ps. 105:48]” (Lateran Council, SCD 274).

The Synod of Dort exhorted both universities and churches “to regulate, by the Scripture, according to the analogy of faith, not only their sentiments, but also their language, and to abstain from all those phrases which exceed the limits necessary to be observed in ascertaining the genuine sense of the Holy Scriptures.” As “witness and keeper of holy Writ” the church is not so unconstrained that it may “so expound one place of Scripture that it be repugnant to another” (Irish Articles, 75).

The plain sense or literal meaning of a scripture text must be sought first. But where a text has multiple meanings and layers of potential interpretation, its spiritual meaning is sought and often adequately defined by classic exegesis.

The earliest exegetes, Irenaeus, Clement, Origen, and Tertullian, while leaving room for varied interpretations of scripture, assumed a position of basic subordination of all legitimate interpretations to the rule of faith—the baptismal confession. Where one text of scripture appeared contradictory to another, they reasoned by analogy from clear passages, looking for spiritual insight consistent with the rule of faith, assuming that the Holy Spirit had veiled the outward expression for some purpose. As the person has body, soul, and spirit in union, so does the interpretation of scripture often have not only a literal and moral, but also a spiritual or anagogic or mystical meaning (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 3; Clement, Stromata; Origen, OFP 4; Ag. Celsus 5.60; 6.7; Tertullian, Ag. Praxeas 18–21).

Against Proof-Texting Quotes Contrary to Their Context

Some may charge that the method of classical Christian exegesis condones non-contextual proof-texting. Classic Christian teaching allows that a canonical sacred text may be quoted in the service of preaching without exhaustive explication of its context, provided it is not quoted against its context, or used in some way contrary to that which is implied or assumed in its context. This assumes that the context is always open for further inquiry.

This distinction protects Christian teaching from being reduced simply to a detached historical exercise of investigating the contexts of the written word, a valuable activity but not identical with Christian preaching or teaching. It also protects Christian preaching from the tendency to overextend the text apart from its context uncritically, without attending to the author’s intent or meaning.

The classic exegetes developed a highly refined pattern of referencing. From apostolic times the privilege to cite scriptural loci has belonged to the freedom to preach. No one can preach reliably without quoting or in some way referencing scripture. It is precisely the attempt to preach without scripture that has undermined preaching in our time. It is a modern prejudice that requires that each scripture reference be exhaustively placed in its cultural frame of reference. That prejudice becomes an excuse for controlling the text.

Ancient ecumenical orthodoxy unapologetically makes reference to texts of holy writ without the tedious necessity of detailing their context. Meanwhile there remains another legitimate arena of historical inquiry in which each of these texts may be studied in their varied contexts. The fullness of this inquiry requires more time than most have available, if they are daily involved in the real responsibilities of family and vocation. Hence God has provided an ordered sacred ministry distinguishable from and representative of the general ministry of the laity, which is being freed and supported in order to study all these matters in sufficient detail to make them clear to the whole laos of God. This is the very purpose for which ministers are freed from other vocational burdens: to engage in this daily study of holy writ, including its historical context, the social location of writers and speakers, the history of its transmission and interpretation, and the array of cultural differences through which the address of God the Spirit moves.

Whether the Study of God Is a Science

The Scientific Character of Christian Inquiry

Insofar as it seeks to make accurate observations, test evidence, provide fit hypotheses, arrange facts in due order, and make reliable generalizations, the study of God may be called a science. From the birth of the university, theology has been viewed as a science in the sense of a way of knowing. Historically viewed, the very word, science, is deeply interwoven with the study of God. It employs both inductive and deductive argument. It relies upon the same primary laws of thought and the same categories of reason upon which all scientific inquiry depends. A science is a branch of study concerned with the observation and classification of facts and the establishment of verifiable general laws through induction and hypothesis. Such studies are familiar to Christian teaching, so much so that their history cannot be defined apart from their use in Christian teaching.

The methods of inquiry into Christianity are held by many classical Christian writers to be a “science,” according to the classical definition of scientia as an orderly knowing or knowledge, or a disciplina, as instruction or teaching or body of knowledge (Bonaventure, Breviloquium, prologue; Tho. Aq., Compend.: 2, 22, 35, 36, 42). But the facts into which Christian teaching inquires are brought from an arena that is thought by some to be excluded from scientific investigation: religious consciousness, moral awareness, the life of the spirit, and the history of revelation (Hume, Dialogues; Kant, Critique of Pure Reason).

No scientific inquiry proceeds without axioms and postulates that do not admit of empirical demonstration. Geometric inquiry, for instance, depends upon the postulate of parallels, but that postulate is far from being finally demonstrable. The view that scientific inquiry is independent of all authority is itself quite distorted. Theology is that sort of science that proceeds with a specific postulate: historical revelation (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 4.33.7.8), the premise that history reveals its meaning.

Theology has a definite object to investigate, namely, the understanding of God as known in the Christian community. There is no doubt that such an understanding exists, and that it is capable of being analyzed. It is a historical fact that the modern university since the thirteenth century has been spawned in large part by the inductive and deductive methods developed by Jewish, Muslim, and Christian inquiry concerning God. For centuries there has been a community that takes as a subject of scientific investigation the modes of awareness of God that recur in Christian communities: the belief in God, that God exists, that God is triune, and that God pardons sin (Schleiermacher, The Chr. Faith; Aulen, The Faith of the Chr. Church). Those who claim that such an inquiry is irrational must come up with good reasons for their claim.

No botanist claims to originate the basic order by which plant life lives. Rather, the botanist ascertains an order that is already present in the nature of the facts themselves. Similarly the theologian is not the master of the facts, but their servant. The theologian cannot construct a system of Christian teaching to suit his or her fancy, any more than the geologist can rearrange the strata of rocks according to aesthetic whim. Christian theology simply wishes to set forth that understanding of God that is known in the Christian community in a way that is fitting to its own proper order, harmonizing that wide body of facts and data so as to preserve their intrinsic relation to one another (Rufinus, On the Creed; Nicolas of Cusa, Concerning Wisdom, U&R: 101–27).

The Presentation of Evidence in the Study of God

The spirit of scientific inquiry is open-minded and unprejudiced. It does not omit relevant facts and is receptive to new evidence. This is the fundamental attitude or spirit that provides common ground for all the various sciences.

Within this common spirit there are wide differences between the methods used in various sciences. For example, insofar as psychology is a science, it gathers empirical evidence on the basis of controlled studies, but psychology has found it difficult to rule out intuitive insight and holistic reasoning. Insofar as history is a science, it bases its conclusions on historical evidence and documentary witnesses, and has the same problems with establishing textual authenticity that theology does.

The forms of evidence differ widely for physical, historical, and spiritual truth (1 Cor. 2:10–16; Clement of Alex., Strom. 1.6–20). Truth in the physical realm must be established by empirical data gathering and experiment, and truth in the historical realm by testimony, documentation, and correlation of evidence. Truth in the spiritual realm must be tested in a more complex way, by examination of oneself, of history, of conscience, of one’s sense of rational cohesion, and of claims of divine self-disclosure. Each sphere of inquiry must submit evidence appropriate to its subject (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 4.31–33; Origen, Comm. on 1 Cor. 2:10).

The forms of evidence that are presented in Christian teaching include scientific inquiry and demonstration, but they also include the kinds of evidence found in legal science, namely, the presentation of cases, circumstantial evidence, and testimony of eyewitnesses (2 Cor. 13:1; Acts 22:18). As legal inquiry proceeds from texts, testimony, and precedents, so the study of God deals with consensual precedents, with texts and testimonies of eyewitnesses to God’s self-disclosure, and with consensual precedents that interpret these events (Luke 1:2; 2 Pet. 1:16).

Christian teaching characteristically appeals to many different levels of evidence—historical testimony, moral awareness, life experience, the social history of a people, and the history of revelation—in order to establish a convergence of plausibility along different and complementary lines (1 Thess. 1:10; Titus 1:13; 1 John 5:9; 3 John 12).

As logical reasoning begins from concepts and ideas and proceeds to conclusions, so does much theological reasoning proceed from idea to idea inquiring into how those ideas are related logically. Well-developed and rightly presented evidence tends to elicit in the mind a sense of conviction of truth that resembles what Christianity calls belief or faith. Judgment moves with evidence (John 5:31–36; 1 Tim. 2:6; Hilary, Trin., 6.27).

The reason we demand higher certainty for religious assertions than historical assertions is a telling one: They have more behavioral consequences if we accept them. When the same level of evidence exists for Caesar and Christ, the testimony concerning Caesar remains largely uncontested, whereas that of Christ is hotly contested. The reason is that inquirers know all too well that they have a stake in the result of the inquiry. The eternal destiny of the soul is alleged to be at risk. While it makes little difference to us now what Caesar said or did, it makes decisive difference whether God has become flesh and is revealed personally (Augustine, Tractates on John 23.3.1–2). Information about Caesar does not require me to bear a cross. Information about Jesus if rightly understood does.

At first it may seem to be a decided disadvantage to Christian teaching that it cannot establish its facts with the same objective or controlled certainty that physics and chemistry usually can. But there may be a hidden advantage to this seeming limitation. For if religious truth were capable of absolute objective certainty, then faith would become as mechanical as a math formula and as cold as a glacial ice flow. If religious conclusions had this compulsory and objective character because of the absolutely overwhelming character of objective evidence, then would there not be less room for decision and risk in faith? God would no longer be the incomprehensible, majestic One worthy of our worship and obedience, but merely a rationalized object of empirical data gathering. No longer would “the just live by faith” (Hab. 2:4; Rom. 1:17; Heb. 10:38), with all the character building this involves. Christian faith would cease to be a choice altogether (Kierkegaard, Either/Or 2; Fear and Trembling; Concl. Unsci. Post: 198, 226).

Whether the Study of God Requires a Special Temperament

Just as a wise judge requires a judicial temperament, or a teacher a pedagogical temperament, so does a good mentor in Christian truth require a “theological temperament.” The classic Christian pastors referred frequently to certain tempers, dispositions, or habits of mind that tend to engender responsible study of God. However much modern skepticism may disparage these qualities, they remain important ideals, if not imperatives. Among these qualities are:

Humility in the Face of Truth. The lowered level of egocentricity and the humbled self-awareness that accompany sound Christian discipleship arise out of a realistic consciousness of one’s actual ignorance, the limitations of one’s knowledge, one’s tendency to be deceived, and one’s egoistic interpretation of the facts (Clement of Rome, Corinth, 1.13; Gregory Nazianzus, First Theol. Orat.). It is to the humble that God teaches “his ways” (Ps. 25:9). “Do you see that man who thinks himself so wise? There is more hope for a fool than for him” (Prov. 26:12). “Thus Scripture says, “God opposes the arrogant and gives grace to the humble’” (James 4:6). Jesus said: “Let a man humble himself till he is like this child, and he will be the greatest in the kingdom of Heaven” (Matt. 18:4, Rufinus, On the Creed I; Sulpitius Severus, Life of St. Martin, preface).

Reverence. Awe in the presence of God is viewed as “the beginning of wisdom” (Simeon, Hymns of Divine Love 20; Maximus the Confessor, Four Centuries on Charity 4.1, 2). Those who live out of this reverence are far more likely to “grow in understanding” (Ps. 111:10; Cyprian, treatise 12.20). “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools scorn wisdom and discipline” (Prov. 1:7). When Moses beheld the bush on fire but not being burned up, he asked why. Yahweh answered: “Come no nearer; take off your sandals; the place where you are standing is holy ground” (Exod. 3:5; Ambrose, Flight from the World 5.25). Not everyone stands ready to come into God’s presence: “Who may go up to the mountain of the Lord? And who may stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who has not set his mind on falsehood, and has not committed perjury. He shall receive a blessing from the Lord” (Ps. 24:3–5).

Patience. Patience is the habitual disposition to bear with trials and frustrations without complaint, to exercise forbearance under difficulties, to be undisturbed by obstacles, delays, and failures, and to persevere with diligence until the gridlock is broken or the predicament rightly grasped (Tertullian, On Patience, ANF 3:707–17). Those who would think with haste about God are apt to pass God by. Only through patience does one “acquire one’s soul” (Luke 21:19; Kierkegaard, Edifying Discourses 2.2; 3.1).

Prayer for Divine Illumination. The thoughtful study of God begins with an attitude of openness and receptivity to God, inviting God’s presence and inspiration to enable one’s thoughts to be, so far as possible, fitting to the divine reality (Origen, Letter to Gregory 3). It continues with the supplication: “Take the veil from my eyes, that I may see the marvels that spring from thy law. I am but a stranger here on earth, do not hide thy commandments from me” (Ps. 119:18, 19; Origen, Ag. Celsus 4.50). James urged us to ask for wisdom: “If any of you falls short in wisdom, he should ask God for it and it will be given him, for God is a generous giver who neither refuses nor reproaches anyone. But he must ask in faith, without a doubt in his mind” (James 1:5, 6; Augustine, On Chr. Doctrine 4.30).

The Heartfelt Obedience that Faith Elicits. If the study of God remains unaccompanied by “the obedience of faith” (Rom. 1:26), it is likely to become undisciplined self-expression. No temperament is more crucial to the quest for Christian truth than obedience, or wholehearted responsiveness (hypakoē) to the divine address. Obedience implies not merely hearing the truth, but acting upon it without delay so as to embody it now in one’s life (Simeon, Hymns of Divine Love 45; Oden, Radical Obedience: 9–11).

Jesus said: “Why do you keep calling me ‘Lord, Lord’and never do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and hears what I say, and acts upon it—I will show you what he is like. He is like a man who, in building his house, dug deep and laid the foundations on rock” (Luke 6:46–48). “What of the man who hears these words of mine and does not act upon them? He is like a man who was foolish enough to build his house on sand” (Matt. 7:26). “Happy are those who hear the word of God and keep it” (Luke 11:28). “Only be sure that you act on the message and do not merely listen; for that would be to mislead yourselves. A man who listens to the message but never acts upon it is like one who looks in a mirror at the face nature gave him. He glances at himself and goes away, and at once forgets what he looked like” (James 1:22–24). Paul called for “the obedience that comes from faith” (Rom. 1:5), which through Christ’s obedience leads to righteousness (Rom. 5:19; 6:16; Heb. 5:8), which in turn calls for our active responsiveness that it may become complete (2 Cor. 10:6; Ambrosiaster, Comm. on Paul’s Epistles, Rom. 6:17).

Integrity. Classical pastoral writers viewed integrity of thought and speech as a mark of responsible Christian teaching (1 Cor. 5:8; 2 Cor. 8:8). “In your teaching, you must show integrity and high principle, and use wholesome speech to which none can take exception” (Titus 2:7, 8). Aptness to teach was thought to include one’s ability when serving in public ministry to confine oneself strictly to the exposition of the truth of Scripture and its implications, suppressing to a large degree subjective opinion, supposed private revelations, unnecessary matters of controversy, and matters upon which one has no authority to speak (Quinisext Council, canon 19;. Baxter, PW 5:428). Integrity requires the determination to study and teach integrally the whole Word of God in fitting balance, without omission of central truths, after the pattern of Paul, who wrote: “I have kept back nothing; I have disclosed to you the whole purpose of God” (Acts 20:27; Tertullian, On Prescript. Ag. Her. 25–26; Wesley, WJW 8:283, 317).

The Willingness to Suffer for the Truth. No Christian teacher or exponent is worth listening to who is not willing to suffer if need be for the truth of what is taught (1 Pet. 4:13–5:9; The Martyrdom of Polycarp). The readiness to suffer for the sake of the truth is an intrinsic part of the whole fabric of Christian living, and hence teaching, and thus not an optional part of the equipping of the public teacher of Christianity (Phil. 3:10; Cyprian, On the Lapsed; Kierkegaard, Attack on “Christendom”).

Paul stated the principle clearly to Timothy: “Take your share of hardship, like a good soldier of Christ Jesus. A soldier on active service will not let himself be involved in civilian affairs” (2 Tim. 2:3, 4). Paul’s teaching was personally validated by his willingness to be “exposed to hardship, even to the point of being shut up like a common criminal; but the word of God is not shut up” (2 Tim. 2:9). Those who teach faithfully of the one who was “nailed to the cross” know that some hearers will find in the truth a “stumbling-block” and “folly” (1 Cor. 1:23; Rom. 8:17, 18). Jesus did not hesitate to make it clear that his disciples must be prepared if necessary to “be handed over for punishment and execution; and men of all nations will hate you for your allegiance to me” (Matt. 24:9; Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 4.33.9).

Luther divulged in a comic-pathetic voice how much he owed to his enemies, for “through the raging of the devil they have so buffeted, distressed, and terrified me that they have made me a fairly good theologian, which I would not have become without them” (Luther, WLS 3:1358–60).

The Disciplined Mind

Christian reflection calls for many of the same intellectual abilities that are expected of the philosopher or jurist or historian (Augustine, On Chr. Doctrine 2.1–12): clear reasoning, right discernment of the relations between seemingly distant and varied teachings, multilayered powers of intuitive insight, sound movement from premises to conclusions, capacity for critical analysis, and the power of internally consistent reflection (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 1, 2; Augustine, Soliloquies).

One is ill prepared who has not learned how to spot leaps in logic and spurious arguments. So varied are the questions under consideration, and so complex the evidence, that serious misjudgment at one point is likely to elicit a wave of distortions at subsequent points. A disciplined mind is ready to listen wisely, collect facts, hold many facts together in creative tension, and draw conclusions upon which the faithful can rely (Minucius Felix, Octavius 13–20; Augustine, Catech. Lect. 1.1–3).

A steady temperament is required for the right study of God: fairness of judgment, impartiality in weighing evidence, and respect for others (Augustine, On the Profit of Believing 14–22; Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q16). Without deep self-awareness, Baxter argued, studies easily become irrational and misguided (PW 16: 97–101).

Since Christian teaching rests upon both truth-seeking and clarity of communication, it requires qualities necessary to those disciplines: the search for an accurate text, empathic willingness to listen to ancient sources whose assumptions differ from one’s own culture, and an intellectual balance that brings complex materials into meaningful focus (Clement of Alex., Strom. 8).

The laity pray for the gift of discernment in their mentors and teachers (Prov. 14:6; Phil. 1:10; 1 Cor. 2:14). Discernment seeks to grasp first principles and fundamental convictions that lie prior to all argument so as to precondition reasoning. The realm of inspired truth into which the student of Scripture enters is not just an account book or a machine or a math problem or a political campaign or an advertising strategy (Baxter, PW 2:238). Rather it is a realm that requires listening—to the Spirit witnessing inwardly within oneself, to the witness of others, and to the Source and End of all things, whose mighty deeds in history call forth the inquiry (Clement of Alex., Exhort. to the Heathen 9). “You shall know his power today if you will listen to his voice” (Ps. 95:7).

Viewed merely as an intriguing or fascinating subject, however, the study of God may become reduced simply to an object of aesthetic interest, so that one becomes easily tired of hearing of the infinite. The subject of God would soon become boring (Kierkegaard, Either/Or I, “The Rotation Method”).

This is why the study of God is said to depend through grace upon certain intellectual and moral virtues for its proper accomplishment: patience, love of truth, courage to follow one’s convictions, humility in the face of the facts, loyalty to the truth, and a profound sense of awe in the presence of the truth (Tho. Aq., ST 1–2 Q59–66). These same virtues are also required in other sciences, but in the study of God their absence is more keenly felt. The student of theology cannot claim exemption from these requisites on the grounds of special providential calling or extraordinary experience (Calvin, Inst. 2.8; Baxter, PW 5: 575–84). Rigorous study is rightly viewed as a duty for those who serve in the office of ministry, and not merely a matter of inclination (Ambrose, Duties 3.2, 3).

Anyone who seeks to understand the living God celebrated in Christian worship must be willing to enter into the sphere in which praise, intercession, and supplication are taken seriously. One cannot conveniently stand outside the church and expect to know what is happening inside from reading about it. If the Christian life can only be known from within, then the study of God is a subject that requires entry, engagement, and concrete participation in the worshiping community (Gregory Nazianzus, Orat. 2,). Just as there could be no thorough study of Verdi without ever hearing Verdi, and no profound sociology of bedouin life without ever living with bedouins, so there can be no good theology without actively and sympathetically entering into the community whose understanding one is seeking to set forth (Basil, Concerning Baptism; Ambrose, On the Mysteries).

A Habit of Mind

It is only with sustained practice that one gradually grows into having a well-furnished theological habit of mind disposed to look carefully at language about God and to use language responsibly in the light of Scripture, tradition, and good moral sense (Tho. Aq., ST 1–2 Q49; Baxter, PW 21:162). It is a habit that is willing to ask probing questions about human thoughts on God and to view those questions in the light of Scripture and tradition, correlated with personal and social experience (Augustine, On Chr. Doctrine 4; Calvin, Inst. 2.15, 16; Wesley, WJW 6:351). Mentors in Christian teaching may be deficient if they lack prudence, contextual wisdom, and the capacity to enter the world of moral action and practical outcomes. One who lacks a capacity for imagination, wonder, and reflection may not be suited to seek a more comprehensive view of things (Bonaventure, The Mind’s Ascent into God). Thomas Aquinas described the study of God as a habit of mind that seeks to combine theoretical wisdom and analytical ability with practical and social wisdom.

To learn to dance one must take that first step, even if awkwardly. Good theology is more than a tome or a string of good sentences. It is a way of dancing, an embodied activity of the human spirit in a community embodying life in Christ. Learning to live in God’s presence is something like learning to dance; it is not best learned merely by reading books.

As in sport one learns to play according to the rules—one does not invent new rules as the game proceeds—similarly, the study of God requires learning to think according to well-established, well-tested rules. The inquiry into method in the study of God seeks to review these elementary rules (for influential ecumenical models see Cyril of Jerusalem, Procatechesis; Augustine, On Chr. Doctrine).

The goal of the study of God is the delight of knowing God better with our minds, the pleasure of making sense, the joy of understanding and knowing the blessedness of divinity—an incomparably intriguing subject (Tho. Aq., ST 1–2 Q31–34; Calvin, Inst. 3.25.10). What other study touches everything else in touching its own distinctive subject matter?

The Hazards of Searching for God

The very greatness of the subject matter of God tends to intoxicate. Those who come under its influence may wrongly imagine that they are thereby morally above other Christians. When certain Corinthians thought they had become extraordinarily well informed, Paul wrote: “This ‘knowledge’ of yours is utter disaster to the weak, the brother for whom Christ died” (1 Cor. 8:11). Again: “This ‘knowledge’ breeds conceit; it is love that builds. If anyone fancies that he knows, he knows nothing yet, in the true sense of knowing. But if a man loves, he is acknowledged by God” (1 Cor. 8:1–3; Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 4.12.2; 4.33.8).

The study of God indeed enlarges our minds, provides the intellect with the loftiest themes upon which the human mind can dwell, addresses moral conscience with the veritable claim of God, and seeks to enliven the deepest religious impulses in human life. Yet it can elicit pride. At best, it brings “good tidings of great joy” (Luke 2:10), addressing every hearer, however bored, anxious, or guilty, with the blessing of God’s pardon and peace. It invites people to a new life of responsible love and accountability to God for their neighbor. Yet it can become egocentrically distorted. Those who nonetheless choose to walk this path do well to remember the injunction of Moses: “For you they are no empty words; they are your very life” (Deut. 32:47).

The Study of God in General Lay Ministries and Ordained Ministries

The study of God is a habit of mind that seeks to call upon God’s name appropriately, pray and praise fittingly, proclaim God’s action meaningfully, and set forth courageously the ethical responsibility flowing from the gospel. As a rigorous, unified discipline of study, theology in turn is correlated with companion university disciplines that seek truth in all areas.

This raises the question of how theology is at once specially related to ordained ministries whose purpose is to enable and empower the general ministry of the laity. Not only the ordained, but laypersons in general, especially parents, are called to be teachers of faith, since Scripture and Christian teaching are rightly studied by all believers (Luther, Comm. on Rom. 12:7; Chemnitz, MWS: 14; Gerhard, De Natura Theologiae, 4).

Yet it has long been the custom to use the term theology to speak of that knowledge necessary for the office of ordained ministry. In this sense theology is particularly related to a vocational practice that presupposes a particular standard of education (paideia) based on aptitude (hikanotēs, in Latin habitus) and certain gifts (charismata) engendered by the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 12; Eph. 4:7–16). Leaders who perform pastoral service must know how to teach the faith, “rightly dividing the Word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15) made known in Scripture, so as to lead sinners from idolatry, through doubt, to faith, hope, and love in Christ (1 Cor. 13). To do this they must become pastoral theologians—those who think deeply about the pastoral gifts and tasks as part of their responsibility for the care of others in the Christian community (Chrysostom, On the Priesthood 2–6).

Lay theology is that knowledge which all baptized believers are expected to have grasped, at least in an elementary fashion. Confirmation centers upon the question of developing in young people and inquirers a rudimentary awareness of the truth of the Christian faith and of the baptism in which we are baptized. Whether lay or clergy, the subject matter is precisely the same. But theology in preparation for ordained ministry pursues more deliberately, intentionally, critically and intensely the ground, roots, consequences, and practical effects of that same faith, in order vocationally to prepare the person to serve in the office of public ministry (Synod of Laodicea, canon 46; Second Council of Nicaea; Theophilus of Alex., Prosphonesus, canon 6).

Those who answer the call to sacred ministry must be prepared for an intensive inquiry into the living God, the Word of life, and life in the Spirit at a depth that laypersons do not ordinarily assume to be necessary for themselves (Tho. Aq., ST Suppl. Q34–40; Chemnitz, MWS: 14).

Many laypersons have attained high proficiency in the study of God (Descartes, Meditations; Milton, Areopagitica; Kierkegaard, Concl. Unsci. Post.). There remains, however, a missional distinction, though not a difference in faith, between general ministry and ordained ministry. For the ordained minister is duly authorized and appointed to perform a representative ministry on behalf of the whole community of the baptized (Ambrose, On the Duties of the Clergy 1.1; Leo I, Letters 6, To Anastasius; Gregory I, Pastoral Rule 1). The whole body of the faithful needs leadership in order rightly to hear the preached Word, receive the sacraments, and be ready to benefit from thoughtful pastoral care (Thirty-nine Articles of Religion 23–30).

The Study of Religion and the Study of God

Since God has never left himself without witness (Acts 14:17), humanity has never been without religion in some form. The hunger for God does not fully disappear even in an atheistic society in which religion is coercively disavowed. God is nearer to human life than we can know even while we are searching for God (Acts 17:24–28) or running away from God (Jonah 1, 2).

The best Christian teaching is not contemptuous of other religions, but views each history of religious struggle as evidence of divine providence and the presence of the Holy Spirit in all human history. Christians can learn from these histories of religions powerful insights that bestow greater light upon the biblical understanding of God (Tho. Aq., SCG 1.20; Wesley, WJW 6:508; 8:203, 244, 471).

There is a creative tension between the two etymologies of the term religion. In the first, religion is an instinctive aspiration of the human mind, an inbuilt inclination to ponder or to go over and over again thought of absolute duty (religere), as if an absolute duty were somehow owed by all who live (Cicero, De Natura Deorum 2.28). In the second, religion is that which binds (religare) humanity to an awareness of the divine through rites, institutions, customs, and morality, in which the religious sentiment finds expression in worship, duty, and fellowship (Lactantius, Div. Inst. 4.28, 29).

These two views may be linked in the view that human nature tends instinctively to turn to God in prayer so persistently that this eventually becomes bound, by custom and established practice, into a religion. Religion has to do with religio, a reverent, dutiful turning of the spirit toward God manifested in conduct and in communities of worship (Chrysostom, Concerning the Statues 4.6–12). Religion refers to the means by which one’s life before God becomes sustained and expressed in terms of community, ritual, institutional life, and moral responsibility (Acts 25:19; 26:5; 1 Tim. 5:4; Augustine, CG 10.1; Calvin, Inst. 1.12.1).

Christianity and the Religions

Religion is viewed in classic Christianity as a universal human phenomenon. Religion implies an institutional context, priesthood, ritual, and worship, however varied in human history. Christianity is a religion, but a religion in a special sense that it views itself as completing and fulfilling the idea of religion. A religion may be said to be “true” insofar as it leads people to the true God and to life in communion with the true God (1 John 5:20; James 1:26, 27). Christianity does not claim that no truth exists in other religions, but rather, amid all the half-truths that parade under the religions, including Christianity, the true God has become personally revealed once for all in history.

Religion addresses the interior life, the inward life of the soul, in giving thanks, confessing our human inadequacies, and seeking a comprehensive view of reality. Thus religion affects behavior in the most diffuse and fundamental ways (Tho. Aq., SCG 3.2.120; Compend. Theol.: 248).

If so, what then is the relation of Christian study of God to general religious consciousness? The heart of Christian study of God concerns that knowledge of God the Father that is revealed in the Son through the Spirit (Lactantius, Div. Inst. 4.29). Christian Scripture and tradition view the religions in this sense as preparatory for the revelation of God the Father through the Son, the Revealer, Jesus Christ (Lactantius, Div. Inst. 6.10; Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel).

If religions in human history all have to do with the way human beings worship and respond to God, then Christian theology seems to belong to the broader study of religion. Classical Christian teachers have often thought of Christianity under the concept of “true religion,” arguing that it is the appropriate and most fitting turn of humanity toward God, namely in response to God’s own turning toward humanity (Augustine, On the Profit of Believing 28).

How Christianity Differs from Religion

All the standard questions raised in universal religious consciousness are also raised in Christianity: Who am I? How did the world come to be? What is good or evil, right or wrong? To whom am I finally accountable? Will I live after death? How can I know the eternal One who transcends all temporal realities? Why do I suffer? These are questions that are familiar to Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and other world religions. Christian theology is not entering an arena of questioning that has never been entered by other religions. But the overall interpretation of the meaning of universal history that it provides comes, not from human insight or ingenuity or moral struggle or intellect, but from God’s own personal coming into history. All religions contain some truth concerning God, for God has not left himself without witness. Yet Jesus’ own words ring in the ears of believers: “No one comes to the Father except by me” (John 14:6; Augustine, Christian Instruction 1.34.38).

Christianity is sometimes termed true religion by the classical exegetes because it has all the requisites of true religion. If religion in its proper sense is the fitting worship of God and the disposition of the soul toward God in a manner agreeable to God, and if religion manifests itself in love for the neighbor and the embodiment of the virtuous life, then Christianity is true religion, whose object of worship is not a false god but the One who makes himself truly known as God (Augustine, CG 19.25; On the Profit of Believing 14). The classical teachers have not meant to imply thereby that any existing statement holds absolute knowledge of God (such as God has of himself), but that in the future history will prove that Jesus Christ is Lord. It is true in the form of promise, the promise of that fuller knowledge of God that the faithful are promised to have at the end time. Paul candidly admitted: “My knowledge now is partial; then it will be whole, like God’s knowledge of me” (1 Cor. 13:12). Christianity is viewed as conveying God’s saving work with full adequacy, so that humanity needs no further disclosure of subsequent divine revelation. Christianity is not true religion because its moral code is adequate to reflect God’s righteousness, but because God’s forgiveness of our moral lapses is sufficient. One hid in Christ is declared righteous before God (Rom. 3:28; 1 Cor. 2:4, 5), which means that the believer by grace is assuredly accepted in God’s sight. “In him you have been brought to completion” (Col. 2:10). The sole source of true religion is not any human moral or intellectual achievement, but God’s own justifying grace (Rom. 5:1–3; 6:14–18; 11:5, 6; Eph. 2:8, 9).

The incarnation is what makes Christianity distinctive in the sphere of the history of religions (Lactantius, Div. Inst. 4.5–12; Augustine, CG 10.1). Other religions have distinctive features too, but only in Christianity is the promise of God to Israel fulfilled by God’s own personal coming in the flesh. Christianity differs from the religions of the world in that its understanding of God comes, not from human striving, intellect, and will, but from God’s own self-disclosure in human history, through the people of Israel, which culminates and clarifies itself finally only in Jesus Christ. After Jesus, religion can never be the same (Arnobius, Ag. Heathen 2.70–78).

The Reasoning of Revelation

Scriptural Teaching Concerning Reason

Reason (dialegomai, ratio), as classical Christianity understood it, includes all the capacities of the soul to behold and receive truth (Augustine, Letters 137; 120.1). These include intellectual, emotive, and volitional (thinking, feeling, and willing) aspects of the self, insofar as these faculties are required to discern and interpret the truth (Augustine, Conf. 4.1).

The biblical writers welcomed reason that is open to the evidences of faith. Isaiah appealed to his hearers: “Come now, let us reason together” (1:18). Amos denounced idolatry and greed for its unreasonable stupidity (Amos 3:14–4:3). It is the fool, not the wise one, who says in his heart, “There is no God” (Ps. 14:1; Pss. 53:1; 92:6). Paul spoke of the Corinthian faithful as persons “of good sense” (1 Cor. 10:15, “of discernment”). He protested against the opponents of faith as those who were unreasonable or “wrong-headed” (2 Thess. 3:2).

Biblical faith has been wrongly caricatured as contrary to reason or disinterested in rational analysis and critical judgment. This has encouraged obscurantism to parade as faith, and piety to refuse to seek any reasons for faith (Augustine, Letters 120). This stands contrary to the apostolic counsel that believers be prepared at the proper moment to give reasons for the hope that is in them. “Be always ready with your defense whenever you are called to account for the hope that is in you, but make that defense with modesty and respect” (1 Peter 3:15). “We must be so well instructed in the knowledge of our faith that whenever anyone asks us about it we may a be able to give them a proper answer and to do so with meekness and in the fear of God. For whoever says anything about God must do so as if God himself were present to hear him” (Didymus the Blind, Catena CEC 65).

Classical Christian exegetes sought to communicate both the importance and the limits of the faithful service of reason. They tried to avoid the rationalist exaggeration that reason is omnicompetent, thereby leaving no role for God to speak in the history of revelation (Tertullian, Apol. 46–47). They also resisted the opposite exaggeration, that reason is completely undone and incompetent in the presence of the mysteries of religion (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 2). The emotive flow as such cannot substitute for analysis, observation, logical consistency, and historical awareness. Feelings may mislead (Amos 6:1). Faith asks for rigorous, critical reflection within the bounds of humble contrition touching everything human. Those who have been most profoundly grasped by the power of the Spirit are least satisfied with emotive expression alone. They owe it to themselves to seek whatever clarity is possible concerning the consequences of that experience (Tho. Aq., ST 1 Q78).

Reasoning out of a Community

The study of God is not well understood if viewed as an individualistic inquiry apart from a community that seeks to embody and celebrate it. In studying any discipline, one must enter into its language, artifacts, thought world, community life, symbols—whatever that particular discipline requires—and live with those resources for a while, taking them seriously.

Likewise, a participative element is required in Christian theology (Pss. 95:2; 34:8; Matt. 19:15–22; Acts 11:5; Teresa of Avila, Life; Calvin, Inst. 1.1–3; Bucer, De Regno Christi 3). Its evidences may not be completely plausible, persuasive, or even meaningful to one who has not made any participative effort, or to one who has not attentively listened to someone else who has made that effort and lived it out in his or her own daily behavior (Clare of Assisi, Rule; Calvin, Inst. 4.15). It is a psychological axiom that our behavior authenticates our belief system so radically that we trust the neighbors’ actions far more than what they say they believe (James 1:23, 24; Clement, First Epis. Corinth 9).

Theology is a joyful intellectual task because the source of its task is the source of profoundest joy (Tho. Aq., ST 1–2 Q2–5). At the moment at which I feel my theological endeavors becoming tedious and dreary, I have been forgetting that the center of the adventure is the joy of God’s presence—the ground of true happiness, the end of human despair. The study of God furnishes the human mind with its most sweeping intellectual challenge. It offers an unparalleled opportunity to think consistently, constructively, and fittingly about the One who gives life (Gen. 1:18–31).

Empathic Listening for Consistency

Christian theology necessarily requires the rational exercise of thinking, because it is by definition reasoned discourse about God, modestly framed in a way consonant with the immeasurability of its Subject (Gregory Nazianzus, Orat. 27, First Theol. Orat.). Seen from the viewpoint of the university, theology is a discipline. As such it requires self-critical reasoning about the word of God delivered through Scripture, liturgy, proclamation, and counsel.

Theology has long been suspected both of being too simple and far too difficult, a reputation well-earned on both counts. Much of the language of Christian confession is delivered through premodern cosmologies, prescientific views of the world. Yet the conflict of cosmologies is not as deep as the conflict between faith and unfaith in the hearer. Even when clothed in the latest language and symbols of modernity, Christianity with its “Word made flesh” cannot remain completely nonoffensive (Kierkegaard, Training in Christianity). Since classical Christianity is a tradition of exegesis, it has from the second and third centuries faced the awkwardness of having had its eternal Word spoken and echoed through various prevailing views of the world—dated understandings and misunderstandings of nature, psychology, and society that in turn differ widely from current conceptions of causality, physics, and reality.

Christianity has been faced many times before with many other “modernities.” Modernizers wrongly imagined that the gulf between modern and premodern consciousness was larger than other gulfs the traditions of exegesis have managed to bridge. Our contemporary problems of cross-cultural communication do not pile higher than those faced by Athanasius, Augustine, John of Damascus, Thomas Aquinas, or Luther. Each had to struggle with making archaic language and symbol systems accessible to their own “modern” hearers of the fourth, seventh, thirteenth, or sixteenth centuries. Augustine’s City of God was written amid the collapse of Rome. Gregory I’s Pastoral Care was written amid continuing attacks from the barbarian tribes. The Orthodox Faith by John of Damascus was written amid the first waves of the Arab conquest.

A major obstacle to the modern hearing of classical Christian reasoning is an inveterate modern chauvinism that assumes that human consciousness today is intrinsically superior to all premodern modes of thinking—and, conversely, that all premodern thinking is assumed to be intrinsically inferior to modern consciousness. That premise is deeply ingrained in the insolence of modernity. In order to begin to hear the distinctive reasoning of the classical Christian consensus, that recalcitrant cultural egocentricity must be outwitted. How? The student of God must learn how to enter with historical empathy into archaic, seemingly outmoded, premodern frames of reference, accurately trying to hear what a text or a person is trying to shout as from a distant hill. The fact of distance does not mean that the message is in error.

It remains a problem of reason and will (being willing to reason, and reasonably willing) to learn how to employ empathic imagination to get into another frame of reference, to understand the mind of others of former times who think with different categories and out of different language frames—in this case chiefly Hebrew, Greek, and Latin but also at various periods in Aramaic, Coptic, Arabic, German, etc. Classical Christian writers have preached and taught in all these symbol systems and more. They have often transcended their own thought world and embraced other symbol systems in the service of the truth (among the best exemplars: Paul, Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, and Raymond Lull).

In listening for the internal consistency of the deep nuances of classical Christian reasoning, we face complex problems of cross-cultural translation of meanings readily available in one period but almost inaccessible to another. An intellectual effort is required by the serious student of God’s revelation who must take in a wide range of data, listen to strange voices, place text in context, and pray for the guidance of the Spirit (Augustine, On Chr. Doctrine 3).

Reason and Certitude

Doubt and the Hunger for Certainty

It is understandable that a finite human being, troubled with the vicissitudes of life, should hunger for certainty in knowledge, or at least for high reliability, to whatever degree is possible. But how is it possible to be sure that we know what we think we know? In certain crucial times, especially amid sorrow, illness, and death, our usual rational explanations become stretched to their limit.

As every pastor knows, these are the very times when meaning of life questions are profoundly asked. Life constantly undoes our theories of knowing (Luther, Letters of Spiritual Counsel 1,2; for much of what follows, I am indebted to Søren Kierkegaard, Concl. Unsci. Post., and Reinhold Niebuhr, NDM 1–2). Classical Christian teaching speaks of a circle of knowing: through the inner assurance of the Holy Spirit and the reliability of Scripture, the divine self-disclosure is knowable.

Reason may be defined as the capacity for internal consistency of argument based on evidence. Both deductive and inductive processes are combined in this definition. Reason can too narrowly be defined in either an abstract, rationalistic, nonexperiential way or an excessively empirical, experiential way.

Classical Christian reasoning has not characteristically proceeded by discarding sense experience. It wants to use its deductive rational capacity, but only while utilizing to the fullest extent possible the inputs of sense experience, though admittedly there are finite limits to sense experience also. Reason depends, as Thomas Aquinas knew, upon sense perception, even though the senses may err. Thomas’s arguments for the existence of God all began with sense experience, by looking around at the orderly processes of nature, causality, contingency, and language (Tho. Aq. ST 1 Q2).

The experimental method that we find in modern natural and behavioral sciences is based upon careful observation of change under controlled conditions on the basis of sense experience. Vast scientific and historical accomplishments have resulted from this experimental method. Yet this method has been alleged by some modern advocates (e.g., B. F. Skinner, Ivan Pavlov, Karl Popper, A. J. Ayer) to be the only way to know anything. There is little doubt that Christianity can make admirable use of empirical data gathering and scientific experimentation, but they are of limited value when we are talking about the central concerns of Christian teaching: the meaning of history, sin, grace, atonement, and sacramental life. The experimental method is useful when quantifiable objects are measured and changes observed, but God is not a quantifiable object. Christian teaching does not dismiss or deride experimental psychology, sociology, biology, or physics. It has learned much and can learn more from the data of the experimental sciences, natural and behavioral, and does not object to those methodologies by which quantifiable objects are being investigated (Origen, OFP 2.3, A. Plantiga, Faith and Philosophy).

The physical sciences ordinarily seek to isolate a single variable and try to account through some kind of quantifiable data-gathering process for a demonstrable change in that single variable that is repeatable and that can be experimentally reproduced and validated in a laboratory. But can one utilize that method effectively when attempting to speak significantly to the question of the meaning of suffering, the forgiveness of sin, or the overarching purpose of the historical process? The empirical method has limited usefulness in approaching poetry, literary analysis, religious experience, or love, all of which are grasped intuitively by a Gestalt or pattern of looking at personal knowledge that is seldom subject to exhaustive empirical analysis. Christian teaching in particular is looking for a pattern at work in all human history, to grasp the meaning of history (Augustine, CG 18), so empirical method can take one only part way toward this understanding.

Convergence of Plausibility

The search for comprehensive coherence is the attempt to grasp or see as most probably true that proposed solution to a problem which is on the whole supported by the greatest net weight of evidence from all quarters—deductive and inductive reasoning, logic and scientific method, historical reasoning, Scripture, and tradition. It is a centered intuitive act of drawing together of insights or data from widely varied resources and searching for their interrelated implicit meaning or convergence of plausibility (Vincent, Commonitory).

The knowing of God is at times something like a detective story, but one in which the answer is crying out to be revealed, the clues lying about everywhere. Some of the evidence is circumstantial, some requires careful data gathering; other steps need clear reasoning, faithfulness to credible sources, or sharp intuition. Comprehensive coherence is that kind of reasoning which says that the most adequate explanation of something is the one that brings into focus the most widely varied inputs into a single, cohesive, tentatively meaningful frame of reference. Intuitive reasoning based on facts seeks to ascertain whether the overall evidence is reasonable or not. It differs from strict laboratory or experimental conditions in its breadth, variety, and imagination. Scientific experimentation tries to bracket out these broader intuitions and insights and focus upon a single, manipulatable, objective variable. But the single-variable approach can box the inquirer into a vision that is highly constricted (Cusa, U&R; Reinhold Niebuhr, NDM 1: 18–24, 104).

The study of God, ironically, is distinguished from empirical science in that it seeks to account for the greatest possible number of variables, rather than a single variable. For this unique study asks about the meaning of history. This is one way of describing the central task of theology: to give a credible account for the meaning of history, creation to consummation, viewed as God’s story (Luke 1:3; 1 Chron. 11:11; 2 Chron. 13:22; Ps. 81:10). To deny a hearing to any kind of data by a prior and arbitrary limitation of method risks losing that part of the truth (Gregory I, Dialogues). Historically, theology has been relatively more willing to investigate speculative hypotheses, eschatology, psychological intuition, paranormal phenomena, and moral conscience than have the behavioral sciences, which have often ruled out such hypotheses.

Augustine remarked that “every good and true Christian should understand that wherever he may find truth, it is his Lord’s” (On Chr. Doctrine 2.18). If God is the deepest truth (even though not fully fathomed), wherever the truth appears, there is some evidence of God’s presence (Clement of Alex., Strom. 1.13).

We ourselves have not lived for more than a few decades, yet human beings have lived in cities for at least twelve thousand years. Our sufferings for one another are placed by the historical reasoning of the New Testament in the context of the “purpose of God hidden for ages” (Eph. 3:9; Jerome, Epis. to Eph. 2.3.8–9; Col. 1:26).

The puzzle of being a human being is the fact that we live in nature, and are restricted by nature, yet we are capable of self-transcendence, of life in the spirit. We are not explainable to ourselves merely in terms of naturalistic reductionisms, yet we are not transnatural or superpersonal angels or unembodied intelligences. Human existence is lived on the boundary between the natural and transnatural—rooted in nature and the causal order, yet with capacity for self-determination and self-transcendence (Kierkegaard, Sickness into Death).

This is symbolized in the Christian community by shorthand language: body and soul (sōma and psychē). The person (psychosomatically, paradoxically conceived) is wrapped in causal chains, yet exists as free: finite, yet capable of transcending finitude. Human life is “a sort of connecting link between the visible and invisible natures” (John of Damascus, OF 2.12).

Limits of Radical Skepticism

If all who claim to have received a revelation from God were to be viewed as equally plausible, hypertolerant fanaticism would have a field day. The easy credit would lead to bankruptcy.

Reason comes into play by sorting out the legitimacy of claims of alleged revelation in the light of all that one has already learned about God through comprehensive coherence (1 Thess. 5:21; 2 Cor. 11:1–21). Data received must often be corrected on the basis of subsequent experiences, and those experiences in turn await being corrected by later experiences, only to find that later experiences then have to be again corrected by earlier experiences, and so on (Jer. 5:3). The dilemma deepens when we ask: How can we be assured that there are not yet-to-be-discovered important data that will challenge or contradict our currently assumed reliable and constructive knowledge?

Our reasoning depends upon assumptions and postulates to which no data-gathering process can appeal, and that no data-gathering process can establish and that no reasoning process can prove without assuming these postulates precisely while the proofs are being attempted (Origen, OFP preface). Two examples are the intelligibility of nature and the principle of consistency. One: Any attempt to communicate through language involves the assumption that we are living in an intelligible order. Yet how can one prove that assumption? It remains an axiom, an assumption that lies quietly behind our reasoning (Augustine, Soliloquies 2). Two: If genuinely contradictory ideas can be true at the same time, then no argument for or against any conclusion has any force. Yet there is no way to establish that principle empirically, and no way to demonstrate it rationally without first depending on it (Anselm, Concerning Truth 9).

This leads us toward the temptation of complete skepticism about knowing anything at all. The ancient skeptic Carneades asserted that it is impossible to know anything about anything at all. He thought that we must base any truth on premises that we already hold, and that if we attempt to prove the premises, we can only move back toward other premises upon which we base our proof (N. MacColl, The Greek Skeptics; Augustine, On the Profit of Believing).

The pathetic-comic conclusion: The reason no philosophy has been able to teach or embrace a complete skepticism is that it is impossible to do it. To believe that nothing can be known is to believe that even the meaning of that belief cannot be known. If you believe that you can know nothing, you have to be skeptical also of that belief (Tho. Aq., ST 2–2 Q60). So even the most radical skepticism stumbles back upon internal contradiction.

Even if you should try seriously to teach the notion that nothing can be known, you are involved in an absurdity, because to teach it would be to assert that you know something. Skepticism is the yielding of the mind to a conviction of the impossibility of certainty, accompanied by a self-deceiving complacency about such a condition. Since skepticism believes that there is no truth, it must itself be classified as a faith in the reliability of ignorance (Pope, Compend. I,; DeWolfe, TLC, I).

This irony helps the study of God to move through and beyond the morass of skepticism: Though absolute certainty is not deductively or inductively attainable, complete skepticism is even more logically absurd, and cannot be maintained in practice. It is unreasonable to lay a radical demand upon ourselves, as we take steps toward life in God, to prove everything empirically, as some scientific and philosophical critics of religion expect. But that is no excuse for not taking as seriously as possible the breadth of the evidentiary process so as to try to bring into our consciousness as many factors as we possibly can that will appeal to a comprehensively cohesive form of reasoning and a convergence of plausibility.

The Genius of Historical Reasoning

This is why the predominant form of reasoning in classical Christianity theology has been a somewhat different form of thinking—by historical reasoning (Augustine, Questions on Joshua 25,26). The Old Testament view of reasoning about God is historical in scope and method. Yahweh repeatedly refers to himself in distinctively historical terms: “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Exod. 3:15, 16; Mark 12:26) and rehearses to his people the mighty deed he has done in history (Joshua 24:2–13; Ps. 136; Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel).

God meets us not just in our inner thoughts but in history, demonstrating the divine presence and power through events (Deut. 11:1–4). “The Lord is righteous in his acts; he brings justice to all who have been wronged. He taught Moses to know his way and showed the Israelites what he could do. The Lord is compassionate and gracious, long-suffering and forever constant” (Ps. 103:6–8). That the Lord is compassionate and gracious is known by recollecting God’s historical activity (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 5.21, 22; Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 6). The Lord is known not in “words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Cor. 2:4; Chrysostom, Hom on Cor. 6.3)

One who wishes to get in touch with God’s demonstration of his justice and mercy in history must look candidly at universal history and learn to reason about all of history in unison from the vantage point of a special history—from the children of Abraham to the resurrection. To know Yahweh one must look toward the distinctive ways in which Yahweh has become self-revealed in history. The Hebraic way of reasoning is to tell a story. History telling or narrative is the distinctively Hebraic way of reasoning—a highly complex mode of social and historical reasoning (Ezra 1:1–4; Neh. 1:1–4; Amos 1:1–5).

Ordinarily the final meaning of a person’s or nation’s history can be assessed only at the end of the story. No one can write a definitive biography of a person until his life is over, because the life of a living person could always take a new turn, and make subsequent choices that would bear upon the meaning of the whole. The way a person faces death is a key to how he has faced life.

Suppose the meaning of human history is to become knowable only at its end, as virtually all late-Judaic apocalyptic writers assumed (the Books of Enoch, the Apocalypse of Baruch, and War of the Sons of Light against the Sons of Darkness), for apokalypsis refers to the final uncovering of meaning that had been hidden. Jesus was born into a community saturated with such expectations—that the end of a grossly distorted history would eventually reveal its meaning, however disastrous the present may appear (Daniel, 2 Esdrus, and the Assumption of Moses).

Suppose, however, that an event occurs in history that reveals the meaning of the end before the end. This is what happened in the history of Jesus—his incarnation, crucifixion, and finally resurrection—the one mighty deed of God that bestows significance upon all human deeds (Lactantius, Div. Inst. 4.25–30, Chrysostom, Hom. on Rom.).

Supposing that such a revealing event had occurred in history, would it not be necessary that it be followed by a remembering community, one that sought to preserve the meaning of the whole historical process revealed in that event? Would it not be understandable if a community of celebration followed that event that remembered it, shared in it, and proclaimed its meaning to all who would hear? (John 20:30–31; Origen, Fragment 106 on the Gospel of John).

Such a community has emerged in Christian history, reasoning out of this event, seeking to make it understandable in each new cultural-historical context. Through a gradual process of news reporting, preaching, scriptural interpretation, and canonization, the documents witnessing to this event became received as Holy Writ, attested by the Spirit as reliable accounts of originative event through which the meaning of history—God’s Word to humanity—became known. Something like this process occurred in the historical Christian community. Each phase of history has required astute historical reasoning (Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho 82–142). Each new situation of the church has demanded a modestly recapitulated form of historical reasoning—the recollection of revelatory events amid each emerging particular new historical condition. Hence, theological reasoning is historical reasoning.

What Good Purposes Does Reason Serve in the Study of God?

There are six classical indicators that show why reason is required by revelation. Reason is needed:

• to receive the truth,
• to distinguish truth from falsehood,
• to reveal reason’s own limits,
• to question contradictions,
• to interpret the truth, and
• to transmit it to new generations.

To Receive Revelation. A revelation can be made only to a potentially rational being. Stones do not receive revelation. Without reason even the most obvious revelation could not be apprehended or grasped. If God wished to reveal the truth to a stone, it would first be necessary to create in a stone some capacity to understand, or the capacity to reason, in order for it to receive the revelation (Tho. Aq., ST 2–2 Q2). One must assume in any revelation both the capacity to apprehend truth and the active openness of the mind to the truth offered (Clement of Alex., Strom. 6). “For three weeks he [Paul] argued with them [the synagogue of Thessalonica] from the scriptures, explaining and proving” (Acts 17:2; Chysostom, Hom. on Acts 37).

To Decide Whether Revelation Has Occurred. All alleged revelations cannot be taken seriously. Some are patently spurious, fraudulent, or manipulative claims (Hippolytus, Refutation of all Heresies, 7; Kierkegaard, Authority and Revelation: The Book on Adler). The community has to sort out which self-proclaimed revelations are true and which are not. When a murderer claims that he acted by divine revelation, faith must utilize its rational-analytical capacity to sort out what is alleged to be true through divine revelation as distinguished from that which, by a larger process of comprehensive coherence, can be consensually received and understood as truly God’s own revelation (Tho. Aq., SCG 1.3). Reason is required in order to judge the evidences of religious claims to revelation (Clement of Alex., Strom. 6.7–11; Wesley, WJW 6: 350–61; Hodge, Syst. Theol. 1.3: 58, 59). The evidence must be fitting to the truth purported. Truth conveyed through history requires historical evidence plausibly set forth. Truths of nature require natural, empirical, scientific evidence. Truths of the moral sphere require moral evidence. The “things of the Spirit” (Rom. 8:5) require the self-evidencing assurance of the Spirit (The Pastor of Hermas, 2.10–11).

To Reveal Reason’s Own Limits. Reason serves faith by pointing both beyond itself and to its own limits (Augustine, Sermons on New Testament Lessons 76). It is through reason that we may see that reason aims beyond its own natural competencies. It is reasonable that right reason know its own boundaries. Augustine wrote: “God forbid that He should hate in us that faculty by which He made us superior to all other living beings. Therefore, we must refuse to believe as not to receive or seek a reason for our belief, since we could not believe at all if we did not have rational souls. So, then, in some points that bear on the doctrine of salvation, which we are not yet able to grasp by reason—but we shall be able to sometimes—let faith precede reason, and let the heart be cleansed by faith so as to receive and bear the great light of reason; this is indeed reasonable.” (Letters 120:1, FC)

To Question Contradictions. No one can reasonably be required to believe absurdities. The mind is God-given. It has a responsibility to reject falsity. If a claim of religion requires that which negates or contradicts a duly authenticated revelation of God, it is to be rejected as false religion, and inconsistent with faith’s reasoning. Paul went to great lengths with the Galatians to urge consistency of teaching (Gal. 1:8). If human beings are to be held responsible for themselves before God, they must have some capacity both to know the good, and to recognize their own failure to do good. The earliest Christians were warned against naiveté: “Do not trust any and every spirit, my friends; test the spirits, to see whether they are from God, for among those who have gone out into the world there are many prophets falsely inspired” (1 John 4:1; Bede, On 1 John). Furthermore, a standard of judgment is given: “This is how we may recognize the Spirit of God: every spirit which acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God” (1 John 4:2; John Cassian, Conferences 1.20).

To Interpret and Apply Revealed Truth. Even if a community had received divinely revealed truth, and recognized it as such, it must still use practical moral reason to discover the implications of this truth in a specific historical context, expressed in its own language. Even after we have learned that God is revealed as just and requires justice, we still must ask what that justice means for us and how it is to pertain to our particular situation. This requires reason (Tho. Aq., SCG 3.; Wakefield, CSCT: 20–22). It is by reason that the believer learns to utilize analogies in the service of the truth, to make observations from nature and history, and to remove doubts by setting forth reasonable arguments. The teachings of faith are exhibited, clarified, and made rhetorically persuasive by good reasoning (Augustine, Conf. 11.25–31). Reason serves faith by helping to remove objections to faith (Augustine, Letters 102.38).

To Transmit the Meaning of Revelation. To transmit truth to another, one must employ reasoning. To communicate from one rational mind to another, one must presuppose the rational capacity of both speaker and hearer. Reason is needed if one seeks either to understand or to make understandable the truth of Christian faith. No preaching or teaching can occur without some rational capacity. By reason, faith’s wisdom is correlated with the insights of philosophy, history, political ethics, psychology, and other sciences (Clement of Alex., Strom. 4.18).

Classic Christianity welcomes that reasoning which receives revelation, distinguishes between true and false revelation, reveals reason’s own limits, questions contradictions, interprets the truth of revelation in the present, and transmits revelation to emergent historical situations.

A Balanced Reliance upon Reason

Although reason is intended to be put to these good uses, it is always prone to distortion. Since the fall of man, reason has been blind, proud, vain, tangled in self-deceit (Rom. 1:21; 1 Cor. 3:1; Gal. 4:8; Eph. 4:17, 18). Fallen reason is not able, without grace, to lift itself up to a fair recognition of the divine mysteries (Matt. 11:27; 1 Cor. 2:14–16).

Hence reason may find itself harnessed for the service of evil, as well as for good. Reason may be utilized to resist revelation, to deny faith, hope, and love (Rom. 8:6; 1 Cor. 2:11; 3:18–20; R. Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society). Fallen reason stands in need of repentance, cleansing, and conversion, that it too might become captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor. 10:4, 5).

Because of its proneness to self-deception, natural reason unaided by grace is not to be viewed at all times as an adequate rule for judging faith or revelation (Gerhard, Loci 2: 362). “Theology does not condemn the use of Reason, but its abuse and its affectation of directorship, or its magisterial use, as normative and decisive in divine things” (Quenstedt, in DT: 35).

There can also be an overdependence upon speculative reasoning, or a distorted technical reason that functions without moral constraints. Hence unbalanced forms of rationalism may pervert the function of reason and thereby undermine the appropriate service of reason to the study of God. Classical Christian writers have sought to show that faith does not conflict with right reason, that there is harmony between revelation’s historical way of reasoning and reason’s respect for all the evidence, and that human reasoning is made more plausible and whole when the evidences of historical revelation are rightly weighed.

The orthodox Lutheran theologian Johann Gerhard wisely maintained: “Anyone who would deny those things which are visible in a greater light because he had not seen them in the smaller, would fail to appreciate the design and benefit of the smaller, so also he who denies or impugns the mysteries of faith revealed in the light of grace, on the ground that they are incongruous with Reason and the light of nature, fails, at the same time, to make a proper use of the office and benefits of Reason and the light of nature” (Gerhard, Loci 2: 372).

In sum, classic Christian teaching concedes to reason what is rightfully its due:

• God does not reveal himself to irrational, but rational creatures, capable of distinguishing between true and false evidence.
• Revelation does not imply faith in the absurd or impossible, or faith based on ignorance.
• Christian faith opposes anti-intellectual obscurantism as much as it does extreme skepticism.
• Faith resists both a blind fideism that believes without examining the evidence, and a defensive skepticism that believes only its doubt of the credibility of all evidence (Tho. Aq., SCG 1.4–7; Wesley, WJW 6: 350; Hodge, 1.3).

The Causes of Resistance in the Academy

It is germane to ask why there is such stiff resistance in the academy to this simple way of consensual reasoning. It is in fact difficult to find any religion texts within the prevailing university ethos today that contain frequent scripture references with accompanying consensus-bearing patristic texts. (It is a bit easier to find older traditional systematic theologies that contain frequent scripture references, but few contain any glimpse of the history of exegesis, and among Protestants almost none).

The costly division of the disciplines of theology into departments of exegesis, historical theology and systematic theology has created three competing methods that do not mix comfortably today, as they had done for centuries. Today’s exegetes largely disdain systematization as a disregard of context; historians deride the pretense of unity and systematic cohesion thought to be a goal of much systematic theology; systematic theologians have increasingly ignored exegesis and historical theology. This study draws them closer together by combining high density textuality with classical order. The reason the disciplines do not mix comfortably is that each discipline is seeking to gain acceptance to some non-theological method prevailing in the secular university. Each discipline is deflected by that struggle for acceptance.

This straightforward procedure of classic Christian teaching makes the study of classic Christianity much more precise, defined, and manageable. Accordingly, reflection focuses on textual analysis of the sacred text, and the history of its consensual interpretation. That is enough because that is itself a huge task. The hard work of teaching and discipling believers is made more definite, exact, straightforward and specific. It is far less speculative than trying to adapt Christianity to some modern ideology. Better to invite theology to adapt itself directly to specific texts that have had amassed authoritative gravity for two millennia.

How Faith Reasons

The term faith (pistis) is utilized in the New Testament with several levels of meaning. Faith is:

• the recognition through the active life of the Spirit, of “the evidence of things not seen” (Heb. 11:1)
• an active trust or confidence, as when one asks “in faith, nothing doubting” (James 1:6)
• a belief, trust, and assurance in God’s righteousness in Christ that is active by love and yields the fruit of good works
• the act of believing; for example, when one says, “I believe” (Apostles’ Creed) one is saying “I have faith that…”
• a body of truth confessed as necessary for salvation, as in “the faith once delivered to the saints” (Jude 3), or the Christian religion for which the believer contends (1 Tim. 6:12)
• reliability, or constancy in fulfilling one’s promises, as when Paul speaks of the “faithfulness of God” (Rom. 3:3)
• trust in the intelligibility of the cosmos that premises scientific inquiry (Ps. 89:1–8)
• obedience, or the obedience of faith, which stands ready to be guided by duly constituted authority (Rom. 16:26)

All these varied shades of meaning cohere, interflow, and coalesce in Christian teaching concerning faith (Ambrose, Of the Chr. Faith, prologue, 1.4; 2.Intro.; 2.11, 15; Augustine, On Psalms LI; Luther, Freedom of a Chr.; TDNT; TDOT). Faith includes the capacity to discern by grace the things of the Spirit, and to trust in the reliability of the divine Word (Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. Lect. 5). Faith embraces the complementary meanings of the trusting frame of mind that has confidence in Another and the trustworthiness that can be relied upon (Tho. Aq., ST 1–2 Q1–13; Calvin, Inst. 3.2).

Faith does not occur without grace: “Yes, it was grace that saved you, with faith [pisteōs] for its instrument” (Eph. 2:8). When grace enlivens reason, reason is not subverted but empowered. Human reasoning, by grace, appropriates divine truth without ceasing to be human reasoning (Basil, Letters, To Amphilochius, 235–236). Since faith is the discernment of spiritual truth, faith is not separable from reasoning, rightly understood. Rather, faith is a way of reasoning out of God’s self-disclosure, assisted by grace. Since faith enlarges human vision, the logic of faith is an enlarged, not a diminished, logic (Tho. Aq., SCG 1.1–9, I: 59–78).

The Capacity of Faith to Discern the Truth

Faith is the eye that sees what the senses cannot see, the ear that hears what the senses do not hear. One who lacks this eye and ear “refuses what belongs to the Spirit of God; it is folly to him; he cannot grasp it, because it needs to be judged in the light of the Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:14; Gregory Nazianzus, Orat. 28). Believing is that faculty that “makes us certain of realities we do not see” (Heb. 11:1). It enables the heart to recognize “the truth as it is in Jesus” (Eph. 4:21; Jerome, Epis. To Eph. 2.4.21). No other human faculty is sufficiently competent to recognize this truth. For faith is to the unseen world what the senses are to the visible world (Maximus, Four Centuries on Charity 3.92–99).

Faith in God is not alien to the human condition, because “the Spirit of God himself is in man, and the breath of the Almighty gives him understanding” (Job 32:8). This Spirit already at work within us discerns the truth, receives its evidence, and celebrates its veracity (Augustine, On Trin. 4.22–32). The coming of Jesus is like the coming of a light that is offered to “enlighten every one,” even though some prefer darkness (John 1:9–12). The Revealer “knew men so well, all of them, that he needed not evidence from others about a man, for he himself could tell what was in a man” (John 2:25; Theodore of Mopsuestia, John 2.2.24–25). Since God empathized with our limitations, he radically adapted the evidence of revelation to the human condition, so that even amid our self-assertive deceptions we might be able to recognize the truth incarnate and the Spirit of truth (John 1:14; 16:13). One who prejudicially resists this evidence has “a distorted mind and stands self-condemned” (Titus 3:11). Such persons “defy the truth; they have lost the power to reason, and they cannot pass the tests of faith” (2 Tim. 3:8).

In this way the Scriptures viewed faith as sound reason. Hence faith and reason are deeply bound and melded together in inextricable spiritual kinship. The same Spirit who has called forth faith also awakens reason to receive “the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints” (Col. 1:26). This is a mystery that sin-laden reason of itself does not fathom.

Faith calls upon reason to recognize and credit the evidences of God’s self-disclosure. In this way the judgment of the mind is given the honor of examining the evidences of faith. While faith is raised up to receive and embrace revelation, reason is bowed low to behold its self-giving love. Faith does not despise reason, but presents those evidences for revelation in history that are understandable to reason (Wesley, WJW 6:351).

But what are these evidences that faith presents to reason? They are Scripture’s recollections of the divine self-disclosure in history. Through the presentation of these evidences, the believer is taught to “be always ready with your defence [pros apologian, ready to provide reasons] whenever you are called to account for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15). Luke wrote his Gospel as “a connected narrative” (diēgēsin) for Theophilus, “so as to give you authentic knowledge” (epignōs, Luke 1:4) of the coming of the Savior (Luke 2:11). So every believer, and especially everyone in public ministry, needs to be supplied with such “authentic knowledge” to provide credible reasons concerning the reliability (asphaleian, certainty) of that in which they have been instructed (Luke 1:4). It was just such “an outline of the sound teaching which you heard from me” (2 Tim. 1:13) that Timothy was instructed to keep before him, so that the reasons for faith might be readily available to him.

The Recognitions of Clement (mid fourth century, anon.) commended the process of asking hard questions of faith, requiring faith to reason about itself:

Do not think that we say that these things are only to be received by faith, but also that they are to be asserted by reason. It is not safe to commit these things to bare faith without reason, since assuredly truth cannot be without reason. And therefore he who has received these things fortified by reason can never lose them; whereas he who receives them without demonstrations, by an assent to a simple statement of them, can neither keep them safely, nor is certain if they are true…. And therefore, according as any one is more anxious in demanding a reason, by so much will he be the firmer in preserving his faith. (Second Clement, Recognitions 2.69)

Christianity’s Social Conception of Evidence

The classical Christian writers argued that the acceptance of legitimate and reasonable authority is itself an eminently reasonable act, for both scientific and religious knowledge. When the believer trusts the church’s authority to discern and canonize Scripture, distill from it the creed, and hold to a rule of faith as a guide to scriptural truth, that is viewed as a reasonable act (Irenaeus, Ag. Her. 5.20.2). Cyprian observed that whoever is able to call God Father, must first call the church Mother (Epistles 70).

If reasons appear that make it clear that the church’s judgment has become untrustworthy, or its consensual judgment misguided, then the believer has a duty to question that imprudent authority. Such a predisposition toward ecclesial trust does not imply an abandonment of reason; rather, it assumes that the community is merely providing the believer with evidence for consideration, reflection, and testing against related forms of knowing (Chrysostom, Hom. on 2 Tim. 2–3). Augustine wrote to Jerome: “If I am puzzled by anything in [Scripture] which seems to go against the truth, I do not hesitate to suppose that either the manuscript is faulty or the translator has not caught the sense of what was said, or I have failed to understand it myself” (Letters, 82.3).

Children conditionally accept the word of their parents and teachers who are seeking to present them with evidence about which they then can duly examine, test, and draw their own conclusions. Educators do not normally regard that act of conditional acceptance as irrational but rather as a reasonable openness to evidence under competent guidance. It is far less reasonable to suppose that the child must begin with a consistent attitude of radical distrust toward those who are seeking to permit the examination of evidence.

Similarly, the knowledge received through Scripture and church tradition remains subject to further exploration, experiential confirmation, and amendment by subsequent evidence. To depend upon Holy Writ and holy church for supplying the very evidence with which faith deals does not imply sacrifice of intellect, however, but proceeds as a reasonable act of openness to evidence.

The Capacity to Believe the Evidences of Faith

However great may be the differences between philosophy and theology, as different as are reason and revelation, these two spheres are not locked in endless opposition. One thinks in the light of natural intellect, the other in the light of God’s self-disclosure in history. Viewed together, both think either toward or from the truth.

Revelation addresses a human faculty seated in the human constitution, the faculty of believing. This faculty is at work, accepting the truth on sufficient evidence, wherever human knowing occurs, and especially spiritual knowing (1 Cor. 2:11–16; Heb. 7:14–25; 11:1–6; Clement of Alex., Strom. 2.2.8–9). As faith receives revelation, so faith then seeks to pass on the evidences of revelation to others, utilizing reason where appropriate to state, clarify, and make plausible these evidences (Augustine, Ag. the Epis. of Manichaeus 1–4).

The study of God seeks to develop a disciplined reflection out of its own unique subject matter: the reality, presence, mercy, and love of God as understood by the worshiping Christian community. It is an orderly exposition of evidences of divine revelation on the basis of Scripture, tradition, and historical and experiential reasoning.