THE FORMULATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD 

All doctrines and theological tenets must be examined in historical perspective.  By this I mean that we must inquire as to how the doctrines or dogmas of the Church came into existence, who were the key players, and what were the reasons and circumstances surrounding their development.  

Historically speaking, humankind has always had a notion of the divine.  Those notions come from observation of nature, from oral traditions, and from inscripturated documents and texts.  In this essay, we set out to examine the historical development of the notion of God within the framework of Christian theology.  

I must say that the notion of God in Christian theology is not monolithic by any stretch of the imagination.  There have been, and are, if I may say so, a variety of notions and perspectives concerning the person of God.  In other words, in spite of the belief in the "unity" of God, Christians have expressed a variety of opinions and views concerning how they see God.  

In this essay, we continue to examine the formulation of the doctrine of God as presented by Langdon Gilkey, a retired Professor of Theology at the Duke Divinity School.  Dr. Gilkey lays out the development of this doctrine in a historical/sequential manner. 

The General Idea of God

In Western culture, dominated as it has been by the Jewish and Christian traditions, the word or symbol "God" has generally referred to one supreme, or holy being, the unity of ultimate reality, and ultimate goodness.  So conceived, God is believed to have created the entire universe, to rule over it, and to intend to bring it to its fulfillment or realization, to "save" it.  Thus, as a functioning word, in our own cultural world, God in the first instance, refers to the central and sole object of religious existence, commitment, devotion, dependence, fear, trust, love, and belief-and to the center of worship, prayer, and religious meditation.  Secondarily, "God" has been the object of religious and philosophical reflection, the supreme object of theology, and of most (though not all) forms of speculative metaphysics (Langdon Gilkey in "God."  Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks.  Fortress Press, 1994, pp. 89-90).

So understood, God represents a puzzling and elusive notion by no  means easy to define, as the traditions of the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religious thoughts have been clearly recognized.  As the supreme being or ground of being, the Creator and ruler of all, God transcends (exceeds or goes beyond) all creaturely limits and and distinctions, all creaturely characteristics; the reason is that the divine, so conceived, is the source and therefore, not simply one more example of those limits, distinctions, and characteristics.  As Creator of time and space, God is not in either time or space as is all else; dependent and vulnerable as is every other creature, in time and passing as we are, or mortal as is all life-lest the divine be a mere contingent creature and thus not "God."  For these reasons the concept of God inevitably tends toward that of the transcendent absolute of much speculative philosophy: necessary, impersonal, unrelated, independent, changeless, eternal.  And for these reasons as well as others, the customary reference to God as "He" is now seen to be extremely problematical (Ibid., p. 90). 

On the other hand, as we shall see, God in Jewish and Christian witness, piety, and experience is also in some way personal, righteous, or moral, the ground or  base in actuality of value, concerned with all creatures, with people and their lives, impelled and guided by important purposes for them individually and collectively, and deeply related to and active within the natural world and the course of history.  The reflective problems in the concept of God, illustrated by debates throughout Western history, therefore have a dual source: in the fact that God, however described, is unlike ordinary things of which we can easily and clearly speak, and in the fact that inherent in the religious reality itself, and in its reflected concepts are certain dialectical tensions or paradoxes-absolute related, impersonal-eternal-temporal, changeless-changing, actual yet potential, self-sufficient or necessary and yet in some manner dependent.  Such dialectical tensions stretch, if they do not defy, our ordinary powers of speech, definition, and precise comprehension.  However, one may approach the divine, religiously or philosophically, therefore, one first encounters "mystery," and with that encounter appear, among other things, special procedures and special forms or rules of speech-a characteristic as old as religion itself (Ibid., pp. 90-91).

Gilkey challenges us to determine as to whether our concept of God is philosophical/speculative, or theological/faith-based.  He also stimulates us to determine if we think of God as an abstract entity or as an entity with personal characteristics akin to ours.  The issue of anthropomorphic language (attributing human-like characteristics to the deity) comes into play here.  For example, do we think of God as someone who in addition to being compassionate and loving, is also one who is prone to have tantrums and get "all bent and out of shape" because of our wrong-doing?  

Another important consideration for us is the issue of thinking theologically in a "Western" mode.  Is the Christian concept of God rooted in Western culture, or should we examine this concept (or concepts) from the standpoint of the Asian/African roots of Christian theology?  As we continue to follow Gilkey's layout of the formulation of the doctrine of God in Christianity, we will expand our search of how God has been conceived of throughout the history of Christian theology.  

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 THE NOTION OF GOD 

Since theology is the study about God (it cannot be the study of God, since God cannot be studied), our attention should be drawn to God.  The topic of God should be the main focus of the theological enterprise.  Everything else in theology revolves or should revolve around the idea or notion of God. The study about God is what I would call in the words of the late Dr. James Cone, the "central semantic axis" of Christian theology.

We do not need to compare the beliefs of one religious system with those of another religious system in order to see notions about God.  Within any given religious systems, we can encounter various notions or ideas about the Deity.  Even within the Christian faith itself, the notion of God is not monolithic by any stretch of the. imagination.  Christians, both collectively and individually speaking, have different ideas of God.  Even when they make use of the Scriptures, which by the way utilize language that attributes human qualities to God (anthropomorphic language), they have different ideas and notions of God.

The idea of God is at once the most important and yet the most questionable of all religious doctrines or "symbols" in the West, and I dare to add, as well as in the East.  This idea or symbol points to the central object of Christian and Jewish faith, the sole "subject" of their revelation, and the final principle of  both reality and  meaning throughout human existence.  Nevertheless, of all concepts in modern cultural life-and in varying degrees for "believers" and "doubters" alike-the idea of God remains the most elusive, the most frequently challenged, the most persistently criticized and negated of all important convictions. Is there a God? Can such a One be experienced, known, or spoken of?  Is such knowledge experience testable, such knowledge verifiable, and such speech meaningful.  Or is all such experience illusory, such  seeming knowledge in fact a projection, and such speech empty?  These issues represent the primordial issues for philosophy of religion, for philosophical theology, and for confessional theology alike (Langdon Gilkey in "God." Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its Theology and Tasks. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994, p. 88).

Almost every dominant motif and movement in modernity-its expanding scientific inquiry, its emphasis on what is natural, experienced, and verifiable, its persistent search for the greater well-being of humans in this world, its increasing emphasis on autonomy and on present satisfactions-has progressively challenged the concept of God and unsettled both its significance and certainty.  This challenge has been on two fronts.  They are:

1.  The traditional concepts of God, inherited from the premodern cultures of medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation Europe, revealed themselves in almost every aspect to have anachronistic elements and to be unintelligible in the light of modern knowledge and modern attitudes towards reality, with the consequence that these concepts have had to reformulated on a fundamental level (Ibid.).

2.  More important, these same aspects of modernity challenged the very possibility of an idea of God, its knowability, its coherence, and its meaning to much of modernity such an idea is on a number of grounds an impossible idea and, as a consequence, the whole enterprise of a theistic religion appears as a futile, expensive, and even harmful activity (Ibid., pp. 88-89).

Because of this second point, the prime problematic connected with the symbol of God has in modern times differed noticeably from earlier problematics.  Our fundamental questions on religious reflection are not about the nature of the divine and the character of God's activity or will toward us, which represented the main questions of an earlier time.  The question now is the possibility of God's existence in a seemingly naturalistic world, the possibility of valid knowledge of God and meaningful discourse about God, and the possibility of God's existence in a seemingly naturalistic world, the possibility of valid knowledge and meaningful discourse about God, and the possibility of any sort of "religious" existence, style of life, or hope at all.  As a result, the efforts of religious thinkers in our century have by and large been directed at at the following interrelated problems:

1.  A justification of the meaning and the validity of the concept of God in relation to other, apparently less questionable forms of experience-scientific, philosophical, social political, artistic, psychological, or existentialist (Ibid. p. 89).

2.  A reformulation of that concept so that it can be meaningful and relevant to the modern world (Ibid.)

Despite the new and sharper edge to the question of God in modern times, certain continuing issues characteristic of the traditional discussion of this concept have also been present, albeit in specifically modern form.  In the concept of God, as in the reality experienced in religious existence, dialectical tensions have appeared and reappeared as the center of theological discussion.  It is a strange notion filled with paradoxes and polarities.  These perennial problems internal to the concept of God (whether orthodox or reformulated) also characterize modern discussions and manifest themselves with each option characteristic of modern theology and philosophy of religion.  We shall continue to explore their career in modern theologies as well as to show the way modern views of God have handled the question of the reality of God and if the possibility of such a concept.  (Ibid.).

Questions for reflection:

1.  What is your notion of God?

2.  Where do you derive your notion from?

3. How does your notion compare to other people's notion?

4.  Do you think that your notion of God is inferior or superior to that of other people's notions, or is it just different?

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 QUESTIONS REGARDING SCRIPTURE AND TRADITION 

In seeking to construct a faithful and relevant theology, there will always be questions relative to the sources of theology.  There will always be questions relative to whether Scripture takes precedence over experience and tradition, or whether the three are concomitant with each other.  

We consider some new interpretive issues that raise questions about the authority of Scripture and tradition or that offer additional possibilities for their appropriation.  We might place these questions into two groups:

1.  The first has to do with new theories of religious language, including British analytic philosophy.  French structuralism and deconstructionism, German and French hermeneutic phenomenology, and American linguistics and literary criticism.  Obviously we can say nothing about these theories here other than to observe that our understanding of how language functions, especially in texts of religious, poetic, and narrative character, has been greatly enriched. in recent years.  The reality-reference of biblical symbols, metaphors, and stories is quite different from that presupposed by the old scripture principle, concerned as it was with the communication of revealed truths and doctrines.  Freed from the first naivete of the old doctrine of Scripture, we are  now able to enter into the intentionality of the writings with a kind of second-order or postcritical naivete , in that way sharing in their evocation of the power of being and the new ways of being in the world associated with it (Paul Ricocur, The Symbolism of Evil. Boston Press, 1967, pp. 10-19).

2.  The second group of interpretive issues reflects the concerns of feminist theology, black theology, and liberation theology in general. In dealing with this, we note that all authorities associated with the dominant Western cultural and religious tradition have become problematic in the eyes of those who have suffered oppression within Western society.  The theological movements associated with these oppressed groups have raised searching questions and offered new interpretive insights.  To what extent, for instance, do patriarchalism, the acceptance of slavery, the logic of sovereignty, the royalist metaphors and a predominantly Western orientation discredit Scripture and the doctrinal tradition?  Are black, feminist, and liberationist hermeneutics now  the only valid ones.  How do they relate to the critical consciousness that had its birth in the Enlightenment (Edward Farley and Peter C. Hodgson in Scripture and Tradition, p. 83)?  

These are difficult, persistent questions that we cannot hope to resolve immediately.  Rather, in conclusion, we return to the underlying theological problem with which we have been concerned all along, i.e. how to reconceive Scripture and tradition after the collapse of the house of authority, and how to understand their function in the constitution of ecclesial existence.  The thesis here is that Scripture and tradition are vehicles of ecclesial process by means of which the original event of Christian faith is able to endure as normative and to function redemptively in the transformation of human existence.  Implicit in this thesis is a rejection of the traditional way of understanding the Church as primarily a community of revelation that endures by means of deposits of revelation in Scripture, dogmas, and institution. In contrast, we view ecclesiastical existence as the redemptive presence of the transcendent, transforming any and all provincial spaces, whether based on ethnic, geographical, cultic, racial, sexual, political, social, or doctrinal considerations-transforming  them in the direction of a universal community, yet without losing the determinacy intrinsic to human being. The problem is to discern the sort of origination and duration that attends this kind of redemptive community, as well as the vehicles of duration.  Remembrance of the events in which Christian faith originated will not be for the sake of the events themselves-a purely antiquarian interest-but for the sake of redemption (Ibid., pp 83-84). 

Finally, there is the interpretive tradition to consider.  Communities are shaped not only by events by events of origin but also by the controversies, crises, and interpretations that compromise their ongoing tradition.  Such events gain shaping effect only through embodiment or sedimentation in linguistic and institutional forms. What ordinarily has been called doctrinal and theological tradition are called "sedimented interpretation."  Living interpretation becomes sedimented in ways that comprise the self-identity of the community and contribute to redemptive transformation.  Disclosures can and do attend the ongoing history of the ecclesial community; revelation is not exhausted at the outset.  Indeed, the act of interpretation may itself be disclosure, and the new disclosures may in time obtain sedimentation (Ibid. p. 83). 

So we have seen a rather formal descriptive account of how the literatures of Israel, kergygma, and traditional interpretation function as normative vehicles of ecclesial process.  If it should be asked why this is the case, what empowers them to function redemptively, then we should want to advance a theological proposal concerning God's "use" of these literatures in the shaping of a new kind of corporative existence in which human beings are redemptively transformed.  To speak in this way does not imply any kind of special divine intervention or supernatural inspiration.  Rather, ecclesial process as such is the work of God in history.  It is an utterly historical process, subject to the contingencies, failures, and unfinished character of all such processes.  God saves through the historical manifestations of human possibility, not from history or in spite of it.  God does not "cause" or "control" these manifestations, nor any sort of identity exist between what God wills and specific historical occurrences.  Rather, we must speak of God "shaping," "transforming," "occasioning," "making use of the uses" of Scripture and tradition.  The unpacking of these metaphors would require a reformulation of the doctrine of providence and new ways of thinking about the Church, sanctification, and the spiritual presence of God (Ibid., pp. 85-86).  

Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 

When we speak about Scripture and tradition, certain issues emerge.  One of them has to do with the canon.  When we speak of the canon, we are talking about that collection of books which the Church (both Jewish and Christian) considers to be authoritative and normative for faith, governance, and practice.  The notion of "authoritative and normative" is related to the doctrine of divine inspiration, i.e. that it was God who gave the Scriptures to the Church.

"Canon," by traditional definition signifies an officially sanctioned collection of writings containing divine revelation-supernaturally inspired and inerrant, the ultimate rule of faith doctrine, and life.  With the collapse of the house of authority, this way of understanding "canon" must be given up.  The question is whether there are other senses in which the concept of canon may continue to be valid or helpful.  It may represent a way of ascribing some kind of "wholeness" or inner unity to a set of writings. While the quest for wholeness is unavoidable, a variety of kinds of wholeness may in fact be ascribed to the texts, leading to several competing versions of the canon. Theologians may having a "working canon," or a "canon within the canon," to which they appeal in construing the wholeness or essence of Christian faith, but none of these may be endowed with divinely sanctioned authority.  In this context, continued use of the concept of canon, however modified, is not helpful and should be abandoned.  We acknowledge, however, that there remains a question as to how those writings that are constitutive of the faith of Israel and early Christianity can best be identified (Edward C. Farley and Peter C. Hodgson, in Scripture and Tradition, p. 81).

Another specific question concerns the relation of Scripture and tradition to each other and to other ecclesial authorities. We have tended to view the issue of Scripture versus tradition as a false one, since in the classic criteriology most of the qualities attributed to Scripture were extended to the doctrinal tradition as well.  Obviously both Scripture and doctrinal tradition are part of an ongoing "traditioning" process which is to be understood in historical-critical terms, not in terms of successive stages of salvation history.  But at the same time, we acknowledge that differences exist between writings that attest to  the origin of a religious faith and those that help to perpetuate it-differences both in the character of these writings and the uses to which they are put by church and theology. A further question concerns the relation of both Scripture and tradition to other elements of theological criteriology such as the role of experience, the function of norms in relation to sources and authorities, the kind of reality-reference implicit in religious faith, and finally the adjudication of truth claims or the making of theological judgments (Ibid., pp. 81-82).

A third persistent issue concerns the use of biblical exegesis in church and theology.  Implicit in this discussion is the contention that the exegesis of biblical texts must be critical, whether employed in preaching, instruction, or the doing of theology.  The alternative to critical exegesis is proof-texting, which brings with it all the paraphernalia of the old Scripture principle. However, we acknowledge that preachers, theologians, and lay people cannot be expected to to be biblical scholars, and we recognize that biblical scholarship itself has tended to complicate the theological use of biblical texts by showing how dependent their meaning is on determinate historical, literary, and linguistic contexts. Theologians, and preachers work with their own set of criteria, employing biblical texts in quite different frames of reference while at the same time seeking not to do violence to them.  They must start with the principles of critical exegesis and historical consciousness, yet they need to move beyond them in ways that are fitting.  While the results of biblical scholarship are clearly relevant to doing theology, they are not ultimately decisive, since every theological proposal and every sermon is shaped by a prior imaginative construal of what Christian faith is all about, a construal that determines how biblical texts and other sources will be selected and interpreted, while at the same time being controlled by close attention to the patterns, nuances, and details of the texts (Ibid. p. 82). 

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

HOW IS THE SCRIPTURE USED IN MODERN THEOLOGY?

While modern theologians have continued for the most part to regard Scripture as the source of a specific revelatory content to be translated into theological concepts, their actual use of Scripture often belies the assumption.  The tension between the doctrine of Scripture and its uses that we observed to be already present in classical theology has become especially acute in modern times (Edward Farley and Peter C. Hodgson in ''Scripture and Tradition," p. 77).  

David Kelsey points this out very clearly in his "The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology." Although he distinguishes between seven different uses, the uses fall roughly into two main groups, possibly with one type mediating between them ("The  Bible and Christian Theology," Journal of the American Academy of Religion  (September 1980) pp. 385-402). 

At one extreme, Scripture may be construed as containing inspired inerrant doctrine. What is authoritative about Scripture, in this context, is its doctrinal content, and this content is considered revelation itself-of direct divine origin, inspired fully in all its parts, infallible with respect to to matters of doctrine or belief, to be translated without alterations into theological presuppositions.  Here we have the standard Scripture principle with one minor adjustment.  When offering reasons for adopting this view of plenary inspiration, what we have is an advancement of a functionalist argument: As used in the Church, the Bible is a holy or numinous object experienced as such by members of the community who bow and tremble before its awesome power and supernatural illumination (Farley and Hodgson, op. cit., p. 77).

In the second place, Scripture may be construed as containing distinctive concepts.  This is the position of the so-called biblical theology movement.  Here Scripture is authoritative because of the intrinsic revelatory power of its concepts.  Using critical methods, the task of biblical scholarship is to set forth the system of technical concepts that comprise the essence of the Hebraic and Christian Scriptures (Ibid. pp. 77-78). 

Third, Scripture may be construed as the recital of salvation history.  Revelation is understood no longer as contained in verbal deposits, but as consisting in certain distinctive "acts of God in history." These distinctive acts comprise salvation history, a subject of events within world history from which, when confessionally recited in Scripture, the concept of God can be inferred and then translated into theological proposals (Ibid., p. 78).  

These first three types hold in common the view that Scripture is authoritative by virtue of its content, a content in some sense identical with divine revelation.  However, in the second and third types, the content has been displaced from the actual words of Scripture, the writings as such to something that must be critically reconstructed from the writings, namely a system of of technical concepts or a set of distinctive events.  All three continue to understand the role of theology to be primarily that of translation and citation.  At best they allow for certain modifications in the Scripture principle but do not question its underlying premises (Ibid.).

The fourth type may be viewed as transitional.  What we have here is not a recited content, but rather scriptural narratives  that render an agent  by setting forth the distinctive patterns of intentions  and actions through which the agent's identity is constituted.  The whole canon of Scripture renders the same subject, Jesus Christ, whose identity is that of God with us.  This subject may be revealed through our encounter with the texts.  The texts are authoritative by virtue not of any inherent property they may have, but of a function they fill in the life of the community (Ibid.). 

Kelsey summarizes this position by saying the following: "To say that Scripture is 'inspired' is to say that God has promised that sometimes, at His gracious pleasure, the ordinary human words of the biblical texts will become the Word of God, the occasion for rendering an agent present to us in a Divine-human encounter (Kelsey, op. cit. pp. 47-48).

The final three types share a common perspective. They construe scripture as expressing a past revelatory event and occasioning its present occurrence. The expression may be in the form of poetic images having to do with a cosmic creative process or religious symbols concerned with the manifestation of the power of new being, or kerygmatic statements expressive of God's word of personal address by which a new self-understanding is evoked in the hearer.  The images, symbols, and statements  are not identical in content with the event, power, or word they express.  The actual authority of Scripture derives not from its content, but from its power to occasion new occurrences of revelation and new experiences of redemptive transformation when used in situations of proclamation, theological reflection, and personal self-understanding.  Finally, images, symbols, and kerygma may not be directly translated into theological concepts.  Theology, rather, has the task of "redescrbiing" what has been expressed biblically in symbolic or mythic language, employing a philosophical conceptuality (whether process, idealist, or existentialist) and an "imaginative construal" of what Christian faith is all about.  Only in that way can it be set forth intelligibly to the modern mind (Farley and Hodgson, op. cit. p. 79).  

Looking back over this typology, we realize that a full correspondence between the classic doctrine of Scripture and the actual theological use of Scripture is found only in the first type.  Already in the second and third types certain tensions appear as such to something that must be critically reconstructed from it.  In the last four types there is a clear disparity in which Scripture is actually construed as authoritative for church and theology and what Kelsey calls "the standard picture."  Theologians such as Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and Rudolf Bultmann espouse a doctrine of Scripture, and they do so primarily in terms of that standard picture.  They understand Scripture to be authoritative because it mediates in the form of narrative, image, and symbol, myth, and so on, a normative revelatory occurrence that in some fashion is to be occasioned anew and translated into modern conceptualities.  In other words, the doctrine of Scripture continues to be subordinated to the doctrine of revelation (Ibid., pp. 79-80).  

Under these circumstances what seems called for are fresh theological understandings of Scriptures that attempt to overcome the disparity between doctrine and use.  Several such attempts have been made recently, but for the most part, they represent modifications of the option we have just explored (Ibid. p.80).

For example, certain evangelical theologians such G. C. Berkouwer and Jack Rogers, while retaining the traditional principle of divine inspiration, are prepared to concede that the human instruments of this inspiration are finite and contingent, thus to qualify the doctrine of infallibility and acknowledge the legitimacy of certain forms of criticism.  But they still view Scripture as containing a divinely given revelatory content.  Another option is represented by Schubert Ogden, who proposes that the authority of Scripture derives in fact, from "a canon within the canon," the "Jesus-kerygma" of the earliest apostolic community, accessible only by means historical critical reconstruction (Ibid.). 

In his own constructive proposal, Kelsey develops an explicitly functional understanding of Scripture.  Scripture, he says, has authority to the extent that it functions in the Church to shape new human identities and transform individual and communal life (This view has an antecedent in S.T. Coleridge's Confession of an Inquiring Spirit. 1840).

It can be understood theologically to function this way because it is God who is active in Scripture-not God "saying" or "revealing" as we have it in the classic images, but rather God "shaping identity," using the uses of Scripture toward a specific end: the actualization of God's eschatological rule. This model is a product of creative human imagination, but it has the power to evoke fresh disclosures of the reality of God and the meaning of human existence (Farley and Hodgson, op. cit. p. 80).

So, I end this essay by posing the following questions:

1.  How does the function of Scripture in modern theology and in the contemporary Church compare to how it functioned in the earlier stages of theological construction?

2.  Is the function of Scripture in modern theology an antithesis to its function in earlier Christianity when the "Scripture principle" was being embraced and incorporated into the theology of the Church?

3.  Does the function of Scripture in the contemporary period constitute a departure or deviance from "the faith once delivered to the saints," or is it on a continuum? 

These questions remain with us as we continue on the journey of "faith seeking understanding."

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.  

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary