Method in Theology

Theology is in the unenviable position (to me, at any rate) of trying to deal in a precise manner with language which is not trying to be precise. The Bible is written with a large helping of metaphor, language designed to make sense to just about any reading level, and talk whose emphasis is more on its affective than its propositional content. Theology is not a task for literalists.

This suggests that doctrine abstracts from the Bible, and thus requires us to notice what doctrine necessarily leaves out--the affective component, in particular, but also, to some extent, other ways in which the Bible is designed so that it changes us. Even perfect doctrine would not be able to do all that the Bible does.

Yet doctrine has a place: doctrine articulates what we believe. Often, the work of articulating doctrine has a salutary effect on those who do that work. We are required to think more carefully about what God is doing in and by his Word. We are able--and required--to spell out more clearly differences of interpretation. We must search for language which will do justice to the majesty of God, and in our inability to fully comprehend what the Bible has for us, we appreciate the depths of God's wisdom.

Having argued that doctrine has a place, I turn to the question of method. If we are trying to deal with this kind of language precisely, we need to keep in mind the kind of language being used. We cannot jump from the text to a literal interpretation of it, but must examine the context and the manner in which the language is being used. To get to a level where we can work precisely, there is a kind of translation which has to take place.

To give an example, there is some debate about whether Christ was abandoned at the cross. That is, when Christ says "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" is there any break between God the Son and God the Father? The debate here tends to have two sides: those who say that being forsaken is a relational break and those who say that there can be no break in the trinity because the trinity is essentially a unity. To answer this question, we would need to know what the unity of the trinity consists in, and what the break in question would consist in. We cannot simply say that break is incompatible with unity, nor that being forsaken is a break, without clarifying what is meant by those terms. The break in question may be a kind of break which is compatible with tri-unity. Indeed, when we use the language of break, we may ourselves be using metaphorical and predominantly affective language to try to articulate what is happening at the cross.

When we ask what these various terms mean, our first step is to ask how the language is actually used in the Bible. What possibilities are being excluded by the use of these terms? When dealing with the Trinity, we ask what the unity we see present in Scripture, which we call the Trinity, consists in. What are we justified in saying about the unity of the Godhead from the language of the Bible? All three persons are God, and God is one--and what does "one" mean here? Of course, it should be noticed that there are few technical terms in the Bible--again, the language in use is vernacular, metaphorical language designed primarily to reach the whole person as a willing, loving, thinking being, not merely the rational side of some individuals.

The next step is to bring the terms together to see what entails what, what is incompatible with what, and what is indifferent to what. At this stage we can argue for a position regarding the break between Father and Son at the cross. The first stage simply gets the material for this second stage, and articulates what is being said. At this stage, we locate the implications of what is said with reference to a particular question.

The final step is to bring several of these kinds of examinations together to form a high-level account of God's nature and our nature in relation to God. There will often be circles, however. We may find ourselves with different arguments for opposed positions, such that we are forced to re-examine our account of how words are being used in the Bible. Our high-level accounts will feed back into lower level accounts and into our interpretations, even when we do not notice or are trying not to permit it.

Theology is not a tidy business, but it is necessary to engage carefully in the task, recognizing the difficulty which the Bible's way of using language presents for the precise work of articulating doctrine. Too often, we read off the text too literally, not recognizing that our assumptions about the way the language is being used may be valid only for articulating one side of how things are, albeit the side God is most concerned to emphasize at that point.