This post will be like a miscellanies. I want to touch upon two issues that have recently come up on social media for me. 1) The relationship between theological exegesis and prima facie biblical teaching; and 2) I want to develop further upon something I tweeted a few days ago, this: “Theology can become a place where you get lost, if you’re not careful.” I will address these loci in corresponding order.

Biblical Teaching and Theological Exegesis

I am a proponent of what is called ‘theological exegesis,’ or more frequently ‘theological interpretation of Scripture’ (TIS). This means that I think Holy Scripture has an inner-theo-logic that allows it to assert the things that it does in its very occasional writings. This is not to say that Scripture’s apparent teachings can’t be taken at face value, but that often there is something more going on behind the outer reality of the text that ought to be laid bare and given full weight in regard to the total interpretative operation. But this is where things get somewhat tricky. One example that stands out to me currently is the issue of baptism. Adherents to paedobaptism—both the sacramental and covenantal proponents—I contend privilege ‘theological’ exegesis over against the face-value reading of Scripture. I would argue that they do so to the breaking point of theological-exegesis’s fruitfulness, and instead start the process of reading things into the text that even the inner-logic does not support, per se. And yet this obviously is not an easy balance to strike; it is not always easy to know when the theology becomes artificial and when it is actually present in the text’s underlying reality. One criterion that I refer to, though, is if I can give Scripture’s outer teaching the chance to stand on its own, as its own theological development, it is at this point that I will allow the so called ‘outer level’ of Scripture to impinge on any attempts to deploy theological exegesis as another canon by which I arrive at an exegetical conclusion. Clearly, what I am noting involves some serious and deliberative judgment calls. But I think that there are cases, like baptism, where this needs to happen. Another example is with the issue of so-called Christian Universalism. There are theological constructs out there, like PT Forsyth’s et al. wherein the coherence value of the construct makes it very seductive in regard to allowing it to become the broader lens through which I see all passages of Scripture that have to do with final salvation issues. But the outer-level of Scripture’s teaching is rather clear on this point; I believe. There are universalist and particularist passages in Scripture, but the former are always reigned in by the latter.

This is not a very thorough thinking out of this issue, but I wanted to register something. I think human beings, all of us, have the tendency to be drawn one direction or another. I think this is what has happened to many of us who grew up as evangelicals. We were taught one way, i.e. the Literal, Grammatical, Historical, to interpret Scripture; but once we realized its intellectual background, and understood why it seemingly gave us such sterile interactions with the text of Scripture, we wanted something more. When we started engaging with and listening to the past, we realized that the Church’s history of interpretation offers certain Christological and Trinitarian riches, in the biblical interpretative process, that we’d never known before. Once we tasted that, we fully abandoned the idea that the Bible could still be read in ‘critical’ ways, with reference to linguistic, historical, and other tools made available in that process. I think this helps explain, at least for me, why some of the evangelicals who I have contact with are seemingly so willing to go wherever their new teachers, in this mode, take them. I think we ought to slow down just a little.

Getting Lost in Theological Constructs

As I noted previously, I shared the following on Twitter in the last few days: “Theology can become a place where you get lost, if you’re not careful.” A thoughtful and fellow Twitterer responded this way: “Thanks! I believe that if theology is done from an honest quest to find truth and to find God, God will not let someone lose ground. Things might (or better: they’re certain to) get more complex and challenging though, when you move from “just” believing to doing theology.”[1] I thought her response succinctly captured what I was getting at; particularly the part I have emboldened. But let me expand a little more.

I often think about where I would be if I had simply stayed where I was as a Christian up an until I was about 21 years old. I was a pastor’s kid, with a genuine love relationship with Christ. I had many Bible passages memorized, had been involved in quite a bit of church and evangelistic ministry, and had a simple understanding of doctrinal realities; the ‘orthodox’ realities about who God is, and what salvation entails—what some call ‘the essentials of the faith.’ Now, I don’t think I’ve abandoned any of that, post-21, instead, by God’s grace there has been an expansion on these things; and all that is implied and tucked under them in the history of theological ideas. But it is interesting to me: I was never a Barthian, Torrancean, Calvinian, Luther[an], Evangelical Calvinist, or what have you; I was simply a Christian who was simply walking with Christ. As I have studied and developed, theologically as a Christian over the last twenty-four years, I have been confronted with a variety of ideas; some good for my soul, and some deleterious. But as Evelyne noted in her response to my tweet, ‘God will not let someone lose ground’; I think this is the case. This, though, doesn’t change the fact that some actually do lose ground. That seems ironic to say. What I mean is that there are people out there, who for whatever reason, get hooked up with bad teachers, and thus bad teaching. Some of these folks would have been better off, maybe, to never have treaded the theological waters to begin with. So, how can I agree with Evelyne, and then seemingly take that back?

You will have to visit again to see how I answer the seeming dilemma I just left with (in another forthcoming blog post). Ultimately, I think people who don’t attempt to enter the deeper theological waters as Christians end up living with worse theology than if they had. Indeed, to not engage with the ‘deeper theological’ realities as a Christian means that this Christian is settling for whatever is ‘given’ or “fed” to them; they are at the sheer mercy of whoever their teachers are. And, as is attested to by the various evangelical churches, at least in North America, in my experience, this is not a good thing. People are living lives under the specter of moralistic-therapeutic-deism; under the chains of a feel-good-God who reflects the person more than the living God; they are living under the weight of a folk religion that peddles in anecdotal constructs supplied by the popular culture, rather than the risen Christ who is Lord! I think the risk of ‘getting lost in theology’ is worth it because staying where we are is what will ultimately destroy our ‘walks’ and ‘fellowshipping’ with Christ. In this sense I think Evelyne’s point is right (which I will expand on further, later); we need to prayerfully seek God, and ask Him to lead us in the right paths. He will do that for us! And maybe this is my answer to the aforementioned dilemma. Maybe people who chart off into the “deeper theological waters” aren’t doing so for the right reasons; maybe they aren’t doing so prayerfully and humbly before God. Maybe their approach is driven by self-glorifying reasons; maybe it is simply a matter of pursuing intellectual knowledge, and then God allows them to reap the consequences of that sort of pursuit. This is something we can all fall prey to. So, maybe that’s the conclusion: This becomes an issue of how and why we are pursuing God; it is this mode that will then shape the sort of theology and theologians we get our hands on. Maybe this is a call for all of us to constantly be involved in what TF Torrance calls ‘repentant thinking.’

[1] Evelyne Baumberger