Something just hit me; sort of. I mean this is something I recognized years ago, but it just hit me again, afresh. It has to do with my personal predispositions, theologically, and the role those play in the development of my own theological trajectory. As Torrance, in reliance on Polanyi, points up, there is a tacit knowledge of the world that we develop as youngsters, and this type of knowledge helps shape the types of big (and even small) questions we bring to the world in our interpretive processes as multi-dimensional human beings. There are at least two primary “knowledges” that became ingrained within me in my early ecclesial life (just as a youngster growing up in certain denominational contexts and theological atmospheres): 1) I had/have an innate disdain for classical predestination thinking, and/or double predestination wherein God elects certain individuals to eternal life and others (the mass) to a reprobate life leading to an eternal hell; and 2) I have a disdain for speculative philosophical intrusion upon God’s Self-revelation.

Because of these “tacit knowledges” it has predisposed me to certain theologians versus other ones; it has predisposed me to people like Karl Barth and Thomas Torrance (particularly when looking for an understanding of election wherein the universal is in the particularity of Jesus Christ and not in particular individuals abstract from Christ [and even to speak like this is part of the residue say of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, in regard to universals/particulars, but that only illustrates how I would rather stay focused on revelation and God’s second objectivity in Christ for us rather than get lost in the maze of speculative philosophy about such things—i.e. acknowledge the role certain categories have played in our theological development but not allow those categories to sublate revelation, rather allow Revelation to sublate those categories and move on from that primacy of development in regard to Revelation’s supremacy and predominance in our thinking]); it has predisposed me to lean more modern theology (and where those antecedents are found in the ecclesial history of all periods) rather than what is usually considered pre-modern (but some of these periodized barriers are actually rather artificial as far as ideas themselves go)—we see in folks like Schleiermacher, Ritschl, Bultmann, Barth, Torrance et al. a constant movement to diminish the intrusion of speculative philosophical discoveries into the theological revelational sphere; and I generalize, and speak de jure or principially (in general principle).

I was just thinking about this again tonight and thought I would share this with you all via blog post; it might help shed some light on why I blog on the things I do. It might help folks understand why I am an Evangelical Calvinist and emphasize semper reformanda (always reforming) per the dictates of Holy Scripture and its primary attestation to Jesus Christ rather than getting entangled in the verities of so called classical or scholastic theology which is indeed driven by a heavy commitment to classical metaphysics and ontology. I rebuke such things in the name of Jesus ( 🙂 )

Maybe this will help some of you understand where I’m coming from better. If nothing else, identifying these things help me understand myself better.

Addendum: Don’t take from this that I am of Schleiermacher, Bultmann, Ritschl et al. What I meant by mentioning their names was to highlight the kind of impulse that somewhat drove their desire to focus purely on Revelation rather than speculative theology. I don’t think in the final anlaysis that they were altogether successful (I think Barth came the closest in this sense). I am still very much so a reader of all orthodox theology; I enjoy all periods. I only mean to underscore my type of impulse and inclination when it comes to the way I want to think theologically.