Back in the day, when me and Myk were working on our Evangelical Calvinism books, one of our Evangelical Calvinist theses (found in chapter 15 of our first volume [2012]) was that we work from a Dialogical Theology. If anyone knows Thomas Torrance or Karl Barth this will immediately be familiar to them. At base, this approach to theology inhabits the reality, in concentrated form, of God’s triunity; it works from the premise that theology is and only can be done in and from an ongoing dialogue between the would-be theologian and God. This means, 1) that God has first spoken and speaks (Deus dixit); and 2) that after God speaks the theologian begins to know what they might speak back to God in and from participating in His life through Christ by the Spirit; so 3) this theological endeavor is grounded on the premise that the theologian knows God through the dynamic of filial relationship and worship, as the theologian participates in and is brought into the inter-cessions of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This places a primacy on speech and doxology as the form the theology takes, and the formation the theologian is transformed into from glory to glory (II Cor. 3.18). On the negative, and contra the speculative theological tradition that we find largely in the so called Great Tradition of the Church, and more pointedly, in what has come to be called classical theism, dialogical theology avoids speculation about God and thinks a posteriorily from the concreto givenness of God for us in Jesus Christ. It isn’t that we think metaphysics are wrong, per se, but that the whole point of Christian theology is to know God as God has freely elected to be known by us in His pro nobis (for us) in Jesus Christ. So, the dialogical theologian believes that while God has an antecedent life in His a se and immanent life as eternal Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that He has decisively decided to come down to us by becoming us in the economy of His life for us in the humanity of the Son. This entails that the dialogical theologian isn’t attempting to think about God in abstract discursive terms that muddy things up, but that we are always already happy to think God from His concrete givenness in the face of Jesus Christ; from the timber of the cross, the rock hardness of his tomb, and warmth of His flesh and blood risen humanity.

I am currently working my way through Philip Ziegler’s published PhD dissertation on Wolf Krötke, entitled: Doing Theology When God Is Forgotten: The Theological Achievement of Wolf Krötke. In this wonderfully written book Ziegler describes what we might call the dialogical form of Krötke’s theology. I want to share a passage on this, from Ziegler, as I think it helps explicate further just what is going on in the dialogical theologian’s modus operandi:

The question of the speakability of God is an important aspect of the pursuit of concreteness in theology as Krötke understands it. In fact, as should be apparent by now, Krötke’s account of the reality of god makes consistent and direct reference to what and how the Christian community actually speaks of God. His theology proceeds by asking not so much how and what we are to think of God, as how and what we are to say of God. This persistent emphasis reflects Krötke’s conviction that theology stands in the service of Christiana witness: proclamation and not cogitation is the telos of Christian theological discourse. Theology serves proclamation by heightening its concreteness, orienting and re-orienting it time and again to is whence and its whither, to its warrant for speaking of God at all, as well as to the particularities of those for whom it is so warranted. We have noted that, for Krötke, this means discerning how testimony can come about that can be heard by ears long-stopped by pervasive Gottesvergessenheit. Responsibility for the gospel in this situation enjoins theology “not to become ever more diffuse, more prolix and more general, but rather to become ever more concrete when speaking of God.” This reflects also “the pre-eminent task of proclamation and the whole praxis of the Christian community” itself. Since “God has not shown himself to be God in abstractions, but rather in real life,” theology must provide an account of the speakability of God that stands by this concreteness, insists upon it, and is sharply critical of past and present theological discourse for the sake of it. Only thus will it “encourage preaching instead of religious talk, and dialogue instead of unreliable banter.”[1].

This kicks against the goads of classical theology. Even so, as the Apostle Paul writes: “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”[2] Knowledge of God for the Christian, as Krötke is keen to emphasize, comes from its kerygmatic or proclaimed character. It doesn’t come from joining hands with the philosophers and speculating about an outer-regioned pure being; but instead from being in contact with the living voice of God for us as revealed and spoken to us from the lips and assumed humanity of Jesus Christ. Some classical theologians like to see this as the ‘modern’ turn to a post-metaphysical approach to theological endeavor. To me it pretty much looks like, instead, a turn back to focusing on the contours of Holy Scripture, and allowing the concreteness of its disclosure and witness to Jesus Christ to shape the way the theologian comes to think God; particularly as they are in an ongoing, ever afresh and anew, con-versation or dialogue with the triune God we encounter therein.

Maybe you’ve noticed a theme in my last three posts, all posted between yesterday and today. They all, one way or another, are calling the theologian (Christian) to simply look to the Christ of Scripture as the ground-bed for how the theologian thinks and speaks to God theologically. I hope that this point is coming across loud and clear; it is what distinguishes my approach from much of the theology being presented as the only orthodox theology available for the conservative (often Reformed) evangelical Christian. The theology being presented to most evangelicals today, if it is offered at all, is culled from the history of what is called Post Reformation Protestant orthodoxy. It is a theology steeped in speculative, propositional (non-relational), and scholastic means for thinking God. It majors on talk of God that can cause consternation for the regular church goer, and even the trained theologian for that matter. But doesn’t this seem precisely at odds with the God we encounter in Jesus Christ as we prayerfully read Holy Scripture?

I am a conservative (Reformed) evangelical Christian, and I think that the dialogical theology I am presenting you with is much more commensurate with the Protestant Scripture Principle Protestants like to tout as their mode for doing theology. Along with Krötke, the dialogical theologian, for doxological and concrete purposes, will be willing to be critical of so called ‘classical’ theologies that major on speculative talk of God that invites the Christian into confusion rather than clarification as they attempt to approach the living God. The dialogical theologian is keen on listening to the ‘Shepherd’s voice’ as the ‘sheep know His voice, and He theirs’ (Jn 10) as He has taken theirs’ as His by the Spirit and made our crooked talk of Him straight (Rom 8.26) in such a way that God rightly hears us and we rightly hear Him; indeed as it is all mediated from the Godward to humanward and humanward to Godward sides in the hypostatic unioned life of Jesus Christ for us. Classical theology will balk at this, but the dialogical theologian would wonder why. It’s not as if we are Catholic Christians slavishly bound to the so-called Great Tradition and Thomistic wonderland of the church; we are Protestants bound to the esse, the very warp and woof of Scripture’s res (reality) as that is found in the Mediator-God for us in Jesus Christ. We can certainly sack the riches, as those might or might not be present, in the Great Trad, but always and only as those can comport with and be modulated through the filter of God’s prosopon (face) in Jesus Christ. amen, amen

[1] Philip G. Ziegler, Doing Theology When God is Forgotten: The Theological Achievement of Wolf Krötke (New York/Berlin: Peter Lang, 2007), 63-4.

[2] Romans 10.17