As constructive theologians our primary aim is to provide edification for the Church by retrieving and constructively engaging with theological ideas from the past. This involves engagement with historical work, along with exegetical, and philosophical work; with a host of other engagements. One thing that the theologian will begin to encounter in this process, very often, is that the historian and biblical studies person they are working with will set up a dilemma wherein nothing really constructive can be engaged in. In other words, the historian becomes so focused on getting the “history right,” that any retrieval of it, in order to maintain the integrity of the history of ideas, must really only be an exercise in repristination. That is, the historian might say: ‘okay, you can have the history and its ideas, but you are restricted to re-presenting it in the way I as the historian have reconstructed it.’ In this vein there is no real way for the theologian to ‘constructively’ appropriate the past for the present. In other words, the theologian isn’t allowed to imaginatively redress certain historical ideas in con-versation with the Gospel for its new context in the 21^st century. For the historian, or biblical studies person for that matter, they so objectify the material aspect of their respective disciplines that they essentially hermetically seal it off, and disallow its inchoate ideas to blossom any further than its original givenness. This should not be!

I have written on this in the introduction to our last book, and so was happy to find Paul Hinlicky opining on the same issue. Hinlicky writes:

Today biblical scholars routinely dismantle the text’s claim as canonical and then proceed as experts to opinionate on traditional dogmatic questions without method or rigor. Constructive theologians, so-called, build the kinds of metaphysical systems that Kant long ago demolished for philosophers with a conscience — or with great flourish and fanfare deconstruct systems long since fallen from power — in discourses that few outside their shrinking guilds read or understand. Historical theologians jealously guard the historical particularity of what once was, anointing themselves gatekeepers who effectively block the process of critical appropriation in traditional discourses like doctrinal theology. So the hard work of critical dogmatics in testing of the church’s practice of faith in light of the aforementioned doctrinal norms freshly grasped and interpreted in every new generation has by and large given way to other models.

But theology is not philosophy, and the Holy Spirit is no skeptic. As a critical retrieval and fresh assertion of definite meaning, the “new language of the Spirit” is a hermeneutical process of appropriation that cannot proceed, to put it provocatively, without a certain measure of violence against the past. Not only does it take up the past selectively and then put these pieces to work in new ways, but it does so, as the critical historian sees things, from the uncontrolled perspective of the retriever. Of course, for critical dogmatics that uncontrolled perspective might be the fresh movement of the Holy Spirit. One cannot say in advance. It will be in any case some spirit! That must be discerned. The issue is less whether the appropriation repristinates any particular formation of the past than whether the new formulations are faithful to the gospel of the crucified and risen Christ in His ongoing history in the world. Historians are rightly concerned to focus on the development of theological ideas and the precise exposition of their contextual meaning. Theologians depend on this work, since Christianity is a historical religion that can go forward only by coming to terms with its past. If at the end of the day, however, historians want to take their stand and object categorically — Das ist aber nicht [that is not] Jesus! Paulus! Luther! — they may do so, but it begs the question — of Jesus, Paul, and Luther — whether we have found help moving forward on our pilgrim way.[1]

The Gospel is greater than the history it comes to us within. The Gospel is greater than Scripture itself; indeed, the Gospel is the context that gives Scripture meaning and canon. The Gospel is what gives history, the Bible, and all of reality its raison d’etre. This is what we should not lose sight of, no matter what our discipline of study. As Christians when we operate, we do so out of the power of God, out of the Gospel; this ought to impinge upon the way we function as human persons in the great theater of what is real and beautiful before and in the living God.

If the above is so, then the historian, biblical studies person, philosopher et al. ought to approach their craft with the humility that the Great Evangel of God injects into all He touches. This means that history, biblical studies, so on and so forth are to be, or ought to be in the service of the Gospel; not vice versa. Surely, as Hinlicky notes, we want to be as rigorous as possible in the historical work, in the biblical exegetical work etc., but that only goes so far. The Gospel itself breaks open new horizons of imagination about the grandeur of Who God not only was, but is for us in Christ. It is this imagination in combination with listening to the past that the Christian can grow beyond the past into the future of God’s life; indeed as God’s future life breaks into our present moment and rings true what only He can as He bears witness with our spirit about Who in fact He was, is, and is to come.

[1] Paul R. Hinlicky, Luther and the Beloved Community: A Path for Christian Theology after Christendom (Grand Rapids, Michigan/Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010), xvii–xviii.