Yesterday’s Post has garnered quite a bit of support and a little backlash. I thought it would be the other way around, but folks must resonate with the problem I am addressing. I begin today with a definition of terms. Faith has two components. Faith is first of all trust. It is to trust that God will do all that he has said God will do for us, it is to trust in the revelation of God’s innermost self in Jesus, it is trust that God present to us through Jesus by the Spirit will enliven us, enlighten us and see us all the home. It is to trust that the Abba cares for us as little children are cared for by their earthly parents. Then there is the way we express this trust: faith as that which we believe or our theology. Our theology is provisional. By this I mean two things. All of our linguistic utterances, that is, that which we assert to be true, are provisional, they are not final. Theology is done on a pilgrimage. We are a pilgrim people. We do not simply live in the theology of the past, but as we journey with God in our present we find ever new ways of expressing the way God has worked on behalf of all creation, in reconciliation, love, care and forgiveness. But we do not ignore the past either. Others who have come before us have discerned legitimate ways in which God was working in their lifetimes. Not everything they said was true, neither is everything we say pure truth. We are all on a journey of truth, “the truth as it is in Jesus.” Someone has well said “Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living, tradition is the living faith of the dead.” We cannot ignore or avoid the theology of the Christian past anymore than we can ignore or avoid our own past. We cannot, however, simply assume that the debates, arguments or constructions of the past are the best arguments, debates or constructions of theology for today. We must engage our past with both reverence and critical awareness. Theology or our thoughts about God are always open for revision or faith becomes a dead letter. In this sense theology is provisional. Theology or the way we express our faith is also provisional in another way. Theology is provisional in that it can and does provide us with the maps others have used as they journey along life’s pilgrim way. Not every map from the past is useful or beneficial, but some are spot on. It is up to us as we journey to ask which maps the church has always used to guide its way. One of these maps is e.g., the Trinitarian character of God. Another is that God has revealed God’s self fully and completely in Jesus and in Jesus has also shown us what genuine, authentic humanity looks like. Theology has maps, signposts, it provides direction but the map is not the territory. Maps are always open to revision, to greater precision, to more usefulness. Our theological maps change from generation to generation. Our children’s theology will take cues from ours but it will not look identical. There is no such thing as timeless theology, theology is bound to language and time and is thus always provisional. On this journey we are yoked with Jesus. But it is we who are yoked with Jesus, not each of us as individuals but all of us together. It is we together as Christian community, as “church” (if you will) that take this journey. We must not throw the baby out with the bath water as some do today in their haste to be liberated from the wrongful authoritarianism they have experienced in certain traditions and congregations. We are part of a larger body that year by year, decade by decade, century by century, millennia by millennia is being transformed more and more into the image of Jesus. Jesus is God’s Word and this is what the term theology means: “God’s word” or “speaking about God.” As we “speak about God” as an expression of our trust in God, we may find ourselves needing the resources of those who have gone before us and we may find ourselves shelving their maps. We may do both at the same time. That is part of what it means to journey with Jesus together. This is why we must always be in constant dialogue with one another, with those from both our past and present so that those who will come after us in our future may also find certain solace and guidance in our maps, our “speaking of God” and may carry on, as we have carried on, so that their children and children’s children may also be ever more Jesus like so that the world may know the fullness of God in Jesus.
Posted on: Thu, 20 Jun 2013 15:18:43 +0000
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