Who needs Theology?

Despite being a bit of a hackneyed phrase, our starting point for addressing this question has to be “It all depends on what you mean by ‘theology.’” The reality is that we all “have” theology and we all “do” theology, because we all have thoughts and ideas about God that we express in words: “theology” comes from the Greek for God, theo, and word(s), logos. Hence, the only question is where we’re getting our ideas from and (dare I say it?) whether they’re any good or not!

It's perhaps a helpful exercise—though, answered very honestly, it might be slightly uncomfortable—to personally consider what those sources are and to what extent each has influenced us. For most Christians, the list is likely to include sermons and talks we’ve heard, books we’ve read, worship song lyrics we’ve uncritically imbibed (uh, oh!), the church(es) we’ve grown up in (with the views they held on things), and our life experiences more broadly. All of these, in combination, form a kind of interpretive grid for what we think on things, including most especially who God is, what God is like, what things are most, least, and not at all important to him and—in relation to each of the above—the equally important question, why? That is “our theology.”

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that I didn’t include personal Bible reading in that list. I would like to have, and it may certainly play a part for many of us, but in my experience, people’s theology more often comes from sermons and talks that quote the Bible (“the Bible says …” or “the Bible clearly teaches …” plus a proof text or two). In other words, from the “teachings” of people quoting those verses that we take to be authoritative; rather than from directly reading and studying the Bible ourselves. But obviously, I don’t rule out personal Bible reading as an influence, too!

So far as academic theology is concerned (namely, studying in a formal setting, at or through a recognised academic institution), different ecclesial traditions have historically taken different views. At the risk of oversimplifying, and generalizing to a fault, charismatic evangelical “new church” movements have tended to downplay the value and importance of academic theology versus just keeping everything simple (as they would see it)—prioritizing a simple, experiential, and “practical” faith led by enthusiastic lay practitioners with lots of energy and vision. Not that there is anything at all wrong with simple, experiential, practical faith, but we shouldn’t think that by definition that comes “theology-free.” Formal theological qualifications, however, tend to be seen as neutral, at best. I’ve even heard it said publicly that theologians always make rubbish pastors.

Theology has been treated as somewhere between an optional extra for the really keen ones and something potentially risky, insofar as studying at a “secular” institution might threaten a believer’s simple faith previously learned by rote. Allowing—and especially, encouraging—the flock to think for themselves and explore the theological options can be dangerous: after all, they might come to the “wrong” conclusions on something!   

All this highlights an evangelical tendency toward anti-intellectualism (dualistically pitching “head versus heart”), an attitude that comes from its fundamentalist roots. Among senior leaders who lack a theological background, academic theology can seem rather intimidating. It’s only natural to downplay its importance.

At the end of the day, all will depend on how important a movement believes it is for its pastors and churches to “think theologically.” This is really what academic theology is all about; it’s not about amassing information, even the “right kind” of information. My personal opinion is that since a “theology-free” faith is not an option, formal theological education to at least a BA level, at a well-regarded academic institution, should be compulsory for any proposed church leader or planter in today’s world. And, I should add, theological CPE (continuing professional education), as well.  

In what follows by way of explanation, I am thinking especially of church pastors, but much if not most will be relevant to some degree for any thinking Christian.

The first reason is that the world we live and work in has changed. Institutions and leaders (whether churches or secular organizations) no longer command the automatic respect that they used to in Modernity. The numerous scandals and cover-ups of scandals in the evangelical church world (and they are numerous; not just the odd outlier here or there) have done enormous damage to evangelical credibility. The charismatic examples of those scandals, with their highly manipulative “God told me,” “Touch not the Lord’s anointed,” and “This is all an attack of the enemy because of God’s blessing” features to the fore, have done particular damage to the credibility of charismatic faith. We need to be honest about all that. We need to recognise the need to think through and articulate a better theology in all these things, acknowledging everything that’s wrong in our part of the church and enabling some trust to be restored. Just circling the wagons and blaming “the world” for persecuting us, or for exaggerating the scale of the problem, is classically missing the point. 

Recent generations lack a foundation in the Bible or Christian beliefs because, for a long time, they have not been taught in schools as (by definition) Religious Education. Most kids have not been brought up in church Sunday School. So the classic evangelical expectation of a “revival” is misplaced: there is nothing deep-down to be revived by the good old gospel talk, delivered by an emotive orator, using good old Modern categories and language. The unchurched person’s journey to faith will be much longer than one revival meeting and requires a quite different approach. Unless we’re happy with only targeting lapsed Christians and those who come from a Bible Belt part of the country, and we consider bringing that audience back to faith to be an adequate definition of success (not that we should ignore them), we will need to make a far broader and deeper case, apologetically. To communicate with Postmodern people we need to think in Postmodern categories. This is a big problem for an evangelicalism that is steeped in Modernity’s ways of thinking (for the most part, unwittingly) and hence presents its apologetic case in Modern categories. 

Please note I am not saying we need to surrender to Postmodern conclusions, such as a denial of absolute truth, or “your truth isn’t necessarily my truth.” But surely we can at least start from the humble recognition that none of us has an absolute grasp of that absolute truth. NB Modernity doesn’t do humble very well . . . 

Taking this a step further, unchurched people no longer unquestioningly accept “The Bible says …” (nor those who say it) as slam dunk evidence of rightness. Everything I’ve already said contributes to this. Everyone is now aware that there is such a thing as biblical interpretation (if only because of the proliferation of Bible translations in the post-WW2 era—translation is a form of interpretation). They are also aware that different Christians have different views on many subjects—all believed to be found in the Bible—which in itself undermines the idea that one can simply say from the front, “The Bible clearly teaches,” plus a proof text or two, and expect that to be taken as gospel. People today are better educated, better informed, and expect to think for themselves. Indeed, the education system teaches students to think for themselves, having considered a range of alternatives—not just to memorize information downloaded from the front. Why would we not expect that to be recognized in churches? Not least when it’s evident that the sermon model is not today’s educational model. 

Our world today is more different from the world of the Bible than any prior era in history has been. The cultural distance is greater than ever. This means that relating those two worlds—what was said by the biblical writers in the context of their world, and its application to our world—is harder to do than ever (or at least, to do so credibly, without naïvely ignoring the distance between). Distinguishing that which is biblically timeless from that which is biblically timebound is a theological exercise, not just a communication exercise. Filling the rota with popular, entertaining speakers will not be enough in itself. The Bible needs to be read well in the first instance, and then it needs to be enabled to “make sense” to a Postmodern audience (because increasingly that is our audience). We shall also need to make clearer and stronger connections between values that are important to Postmoderns and values that are important to God.   

The objective is not to be telling Postmodern people that they “really ought to be thinking like Modern people.” Firstly, the Modern worldview is not pari passu with something called a biblical worldview (though evangelicals have tended to assume it is). And secondly, it simply won’t work, so don’t bother trying. Evangelical Christianity needs to shed the skin of Modernity; which starts by recognizing that it’s wearing it in the first place!   

The Bible is rightly a core pillar in evangelicalism. Its status as a uniquely inspired text is rightly held in high regard. But it doesn’t interpret itself. It doesn’t teach itself. It doesn’t translate itself from the Ancient World in which it was written into the Postmodern world in which it’s being read (keep in mind that in the first instance, it was addressed to and “speaking to” people in the Ancient World). Theology is required for its “translation” from “then” to “now”— indeed, theological awareness is required even to recognize the need for such translation.

And finally, although human experience and the world around us have always thrown up big questions about God, life, and faith, they are bigger and more complex now than ever. We need good theological thinking to help us to credibly respond to them. We can’t rely on simplistic answers that used to work but no longer do—answers that simply “don’t make sense” to people. Still less should we take false comfort that it’s their “worldly, unspiritual” thinking that is the reason for that. When people “don’t get” something, it’s always our fault. It’s not a badge of honor for us. And we absolutely cannot just “copy and paste” selected Bible verses from “then” to “now” and expect that to settle everything. 

We need to be aware that the questions people are asking about God, life, and faith are not the questions they used to be asking years ago. There’s no point in answering questions that people are not asking—even if we think they ought to be asking them—while evading the ones they are asking that we find awkward and inconvenient. Their questions don’t go away when we do that, but some of our credibility does.

The Bible has answers to questions, but we need to be very sure that the question it was answering, then, was the same as our question, now. Whisper it quietly, but the Bible does not have every answer to every question. Thinking theologically with the Holy Spirit is required to discern God’s heart for questions that arise today that were never considered—that never needed to be asked and answered—in the biblical world. The so-called Wesleyan Quadrilateral—which facilitates a conversation involving Scripture, tradition, reason (i.e., thinking things through in an informed way), and experience—offers a really helpful starting point. 

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