THE HOSTILITY BETWEEN THE ENLIGHTENMENT AND THE DOCTRINE OF REVELATION 

I think that it is safe to say that in the early years of Judaism, Christianity, and even Islam, the notion of divine revelation was somewhat taken for granted.  In other words, we don't find too many, if any at all, references to hostility between the faith community's claim to divine revelation through Scripture, tradition, and experience, on the one hand, and on the other, opposing forces that would fight to negate the claim to revelation.  It was basically assumed, that the claim to divine revelation was more than a claim, i.e. that it was a reality not to be questioned or challenged.

George Stroup points out that in the seventeenth through the nineteenth century, the belief in divine revelation came under attack.  Subsequently, the notion that theology was a "revealed religion," came under attack and scrutiny.  The notion of a "revealed religion" came to be replaced by the belief in the human origins of religion and theology.

The period from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries marks a watershed in the interpretation of revelation.  During this period, several developments occurred to create an intellectual climate in which it became increasingly difficult to defend the classical models of revelation.  Francis Bacon's discovery of the "new science, " Isaac Newton's formulation of a mathematical physics in which nature is conceived of as a rational and unified order, the emergence of reason as the primary authority for the interpretations of experience, the distrust of tradition and superstition-all these created an environment in which classical theology found its way under attack and on the defensive the dominant intellectual movements of the day. Three developments in this period were especially important for subsequent discussions of revelation: the emphasis given to human reason as the chief interpreter of reality and the final arbiter of conflictual claims, the denial for revealed truths about God (or for that matter, any statements about God), and the discovery of the historical character of human reason and understanding (Troup. op.cit., p.123).

In essence, then, human reason and science were deified, i.e. elevated to the status of inerrancy, and infallibility.  There was, for all effects and purposes, a "dethroning" of revealed religion.  The Scriptures, the traditions, and experience now came to be interpreted through the lens of reason and science.  The notions of inerrancy and infallibility were now transferred from the realm of religion and theology to the realms of reason and science.  And, in the same manner that religion and theology spoke about a universe that was dictated by divine decree, reason and science now came to speak about a universe that was subject to the decrees of reason and science, whatever flaws or shortcomings they may have had. Reason and science became, in essence, the new "Gods."

The content of the classic models of revelation was confined to revealed truths about God.  Although these objective truths could not be known by a human intellect marred by sin, they could be known through the work of the Spirit in illumination or in Scripture.  In these classic models the primary criterion for the interpretation of experience and reality was "revealed" truth.  In the Enlightenment, however, the focus shifted dramatically.  No longer were the revealed truths the final arbiter, now human reason became the final court of appeal for the interpretation of reality.  Even though God remained the "primary substance" in the metaphysics of Rene Descartes, his method began with a search for clear and distinct ideas, a search which had led Descartes to the cogito-the human being's existence as a thinking being-as the primary datum for reflection.  Descartes's significance is not tied to the success of his method or his philosophical proposals; rather, his philosophy represents a benchmark in human thought. Human reason rather than tradition or authority is now to be seen as the ultimate measure of truth (Troup, op. cit. p. 123).

The combined effects of these developments -the authority given to reason,  the redefinition of the limits of reason, and the recognition of the historicity of knowledge and understanding-made it difficult, if not impossible, for any theologian sensitive to the climate of the day to continue to advocate a theology grounded on classical models of revelation.  It is not surprising, therefore, that the overarching concern of theologians in the nineteenth century was to establish a new foundation for Christian theology (Ibid., p. 126).

How, then, do we living in the twenty-first century, deal with the notion of reason vs. revelation?  Many in our time would resist the emphasis given during the Enlightenment period for the simple reason that this climate was generated in Western Europe.  And because of the claims of Western Europe's claims and pretenses to define its "truth" in universal terms, the opposite reaction is to negate the claims, i.e. invalidate them or making them "irrelevant" to the world outside of Europe.  The reaction, becomes, then, a visceral one, with a tone of anti-intellectualism.  Experience and revelation tend to be equated with "feel good" emotions and in some cases, the elevation of emotion to the status of ultimate truth. So rather than attempting to prove the existence of God, and subsequent divine revelation through reason and science, the tendency becomes to validate the existence of God based on "I don't see Him, but I feel Him in my soul."  The experience that comes through dreams, frenzies, and visions becomes the ultimate barometer of what is true in Christian theology.  These experiences, rather than interacting with Scripture and tradition, become the "Supreme Court" of Christian theology.  

This essay was not intended to glorify the notion of intellect and  reason vs. emotion and  passion, but rather to pursue a theology which integrates all of these elements into a cohesive whole through which we as believers can live out our spiritual journey.  The dichotomies that have us entrenched in separating them must be replaced by a healthy integration. We must also do away with the binaries of "either/or" in our approach to a responsible theological system.  

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

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Reformed Church in America 

Past Visiting Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 

THE DOCTRINE OF REVELATION-CONTINUED 

At this point in our discussion, we ask the question of what role do the Scriptures and the Holy Spirit play in God's revelatory acts and self-disclosure?  This is a very important question because historically speaking, in Christian  theology, the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures have always been given prominence.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

In Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theology, the Scripture, together with experience and the traditions of the Church, play a very important role in the formulation of theological systems.  The Scriptures are considered to be the product of the experience (the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Church) and the traditions handed down by the Apostles and their immediate successors.  Subsequently, the notion of "Sola Scriptura" (the Scripture alone as the only rule of faith and practice) is absent in Catholic and Eastern Orthodox theology.  Even the notion of "Prima Scriptura" does not exist in these two communities, because it is believed that experience and tradition, carry equal weight in the theological task of the Church and its ministry in the world

In Protestant theology (both historic and independent churches), Scripture is considered to play the only, or at the very least, the primary rule in the formulation of doctrine and theology, and also as a norm for faith and practice.  The historic (mainline) Protestant churches maintain intact the value of and respect for tradition, but see tradition as subservient to Scripture.  In fact, they believe that tradition derives from Scripture, and subsequently should be evaluated and judged by Scripture.  Independent Protestant churches believe that tradition plays no role in the formulation of doctrine and that theology should be based exclusively on "what the Bible says."  To them, the Bible vitiates the need for tradition.  

George Stroup points out the following regarding the role of Scripture and Spirit in divine revelation:

During the Reformation, subtle but significant shifts took place in the interpretation of revelation.  Both Martin Luther and John Calvin took the position that there is knowledge of God apart from revelation but this knowledge is of little or no consequence.  The general knowledge of God derived from the created order is for all practical purposes useless.  What is decisive is knowledge of God's will for the world, and that cannot be known apart from Jesus Christ (Stroup, op. cit., pp. 119-120).

For Luther the Word of God is Jesus Christ, but we have access to that Word only in the words of proclamation and scripture.  Luther does not simply identify the Word of God with the external of proclamation and scripture, since these words only become God's Word (that is, become revelatory) when the Holy Spirit makes Christ present in them.  The Word of God is both what is revealed to faith and what does the revealing, but the Word can never be separated from the Spirit, since it is the Spirit who enables the external words to become the internal words (Ibid., p. 120).  

The gospel is the living Word of God,  Jesus Christ, and it is this Word which is the sole content, center, and unity of scripture.  This Word is the criterion for determining what is law and what is gospel in scripture, but this external clarity cannot be separated from scripture's internal clarity, which is the illuminating work of the Spirit "required for the understanding of scripture, both as a whole and in any part of it (Martin Luther, "On the Bondage of the Will:, LCC 17:112)

In conclusion, we have seen that Luther, the "architect" of the Protestant Reformation, stresses the role of both Scripture and the Holy Spirit in God's self-disclosure, not only to humankind in general, but to the community of faith as well.  Other theologians such as John Calvin, the architect of Reformed theology, had different models, but that were similar in their emphasis on the role that the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures played in divine revelation.  In essence, we move in Christian theology from general revelation (through nature) to specific revelation through the Holy Spirit and through the Scriptures.

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Word, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen!

Dr. Juan A. Carmona, 

Past Visiting Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

  

                                                THE DOCTRINE OF REVELATION (CONTINUED)

At this point in our discussion about revelation, we now turn to an important consideration.  We will now look at the element of illumination.  What is illumination? Some may think of illumination as an "enlightenment," or perhaps as an "epiphany," or something that comes all of a sudden out of nowhere and that is not the result of human effort or initiative.  I personally would place illumination in the same category as revelation, i.e. something that is external to the human mind.  

Illumination presupposes that the intellect or mind is darkened and not able, on its own to comprehend truth.  In the past, it has been suggested and thought that the mind has been darkened by the effects of sin. In other words, the notion is that the rupture in the relationship between God and humankind has affected the human's ability to grasp divine truth.  

Because of the Christian mission to the Gentiles, Christian apologists in the second century were drawn into conversation with Hellenistic culture.  Like many theologians after him, Justin Martyr, the premier apologist of the period, appealed to the prologue of John's Gospel account and its description of Jesus Christ as the logos or the Word of made flesh for a common ground with Hellenism, especially Platonism and Stoicism.  In his Second Apology, Justin argued the superiority of Jesus's teaching to that of Socrates and all other human wisdom on the basis that Jesus alone was the entire Word of God.  Justin did not argue that the Word of God could be found only in Christ.  On the contrary, he believed that the teaching of Plato, along with other Greek writers, was not different from that of Jesus but only a dim interpretation of Him who was the word incarnate.  The logos, as he conceived it, is implanted in all people, but although it can be found in various places, is fully embodied only in one place or person-in Christ, who in turn illumines all others (Stroup, op cit., pp. 117-118). 

This, of course, raise the question as to whether everyone at one point or another in history, had a notion of Christ.  Did the Hindus, Jains, Buddhists, and others who lived thousands of years before the emergence of the Judeo-Christian tradition  experience the "Word" in their own way?  If so, what then, are the implications of Jesus having said that He is "the way, the truth, and the life?"  Was the Christ incarnate in some pre-existing way in these other faith traditions?  

Justin was only one of many theologians who have used the prologue to John's Gospel account as a warrant for interpreting revelation as divine illumination.  The claim that  it is God who enables the believer to come to the knowledge of deity was a major theme in the theologies of Augustine, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas.  In his commentary on the Gospel according to John, Augustine sounded a theme that is to be found throughout his theological writings: the identification of Jesus Christ as the light which illumines the darkness of the human intellect and overcomes the blindness created by human sin (Stroup, p. 118). 

"We too, have been born blind of Adam and have need of Christ to enlighten us," said Augustine.  His description of illumination is strikingly similar to Plato's comparison of the idea of the good with the sun, except that for Augustine the Word of God is not only that which illumines the the darkness of the intellect, evokes faith, and makes understanding possible, but also that which is itself illuminated and made known to the believer.  In order to make this point, Augustine drew a distinction between the Word's illumination of the intellect and what the intellect knows when it is illumined.  In his treatise on the Trinity  he maintained that the light which illumines the intellect is not intellect itself, but the intellect cannot know what is true apart from this illumination.  What remained unclear in Augustine's theology was the precise nature of the "light" and its relation to the intellect (Augustine, "Homilies on the Gospel of John," NPNF 7:203). 

So once again we raise the notion of a prior "light" which may have enlightened humankind throughout its history.  Is is possible that when Buddha claimed to be "the enlightened one," that he was experiencing the illumination of the pre-incarnate logos?  Was the logos already operative in human history prior to Bethlehem or did He/It appear suddenly in human history in the first century C.E.? 

The problem received considerable clarification in the theology of Aquinas in the thirteenth century.  Aquinas modified and extended Augustine's description of the divine illumination of the intellect.  He began by describing the human intellect in terms of two powers: the passive intellect and the agent intellect.  The latter, he argued, has its origin in the divine light but is not the divine light itself.  In order for human beings to attain ultimate happiness-which Aquinas understood to be the supernatural vision of God-they must first be taught by God as pupils are taught by their master.  Faith, for Aquinas, was an act of assent by the intellect to those things "taught" or revealed by God.  But the intellect cannot even assent to what has been revealed unless it is illumined by God's grace.  When grace makes faith possible, the object of faith is that of truths taught in Scripture and the traditions of the Church (Stroup, p. 119).

It appears from what has been said above that Augustine and Aquinas were "on the same page."  However, I am not sure that Augustine would leave room for the volitional assent of the intellect as Aquinas did. I am not suggesting that Aquinas was leaning more towards Pelagianism, nor the later development of Arminianism.  But it does certainly appear that Aquinas was not so deeply entrenched in the notion of the "noetic" effects of sin as to completely paralyze and incapacitate human volition.

How can we, if at all, solve the tension between volitional assent to illumination, on the one hand, and on the other hold fast to the notion that an entity which "dead in trespasses and sin," is incapable of being receptive to illumination on its own?  It is, indeed, a very complex issue, and to which we may not find an answer in our lifetime.  Nevertheless, we continue to "live with the questions," and to acknowledge that when we deal with the fine and technical points of theology, that even then, theology is a human construct, and that whatever conclusions we arrive at are tentative, and only "true" until proven otherwise.  

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

Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Former Visiting Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

                                                  

                                 THE DOCTRINE OF REVELATION (CONTINUED) 

Like with every other doctrine, we raise the question of "how did it all begin?"  In this case we ask the question as to when did the Church start to construct the doctrine, or even the notion of God's self-disclosure? 

It should be obvious to the readers of the New Testament, that the first-century Church did not have an elaborate or well thought-out system of doctrines or a "systematic theology," as such.  The first-century Church was too focused on how to deal with the persecution that was coming against it on the one hand, and on the other hand, the emergence of heresy within its circles.  Indeed, the Church had "a lot on its plate."  It was a real active and busy church.

There is no "doctrine" of revelation as such in the Bible, and many of the problems addressed by recent interpretations of revelation were simply unknown to the writers of Scripture.  Indeed, there is considerable evidence for one biblical scholar's argument that for the writers of Hebrew scripture, "apart from some quite limited concessions,  there is no stage at which God is not known (James Barr, Old and New in Interpretation: A Study of the Two Testaments.  New York: Harper and Row, 1966, p. 89)"

The writers of Hebrew scripture do not offer arguments for the existence of God  and do not discuss the plausibility of claims about God in relation to competing alternatives, whether those of natural sciences or the human sciences.  The Bible assumes knowledge of God.  The issues that have come to constitute the "problem" revelation-the relation of reason to revelation, the limits of reason, and the historicity of human understanding-are not issues in scripture.  That does not mean, however,  that the Bible is not  used as a resource in later discussion of revelation.  Both classical and contemporary discussion of revelation appeal to themes in scripture as warrants for their interpretation (George Stroup, op. cit., p. 116).

Although in the first seventeen centuries of the Church's history theological reflections on revelation assumed various forms, it is still possible to identify certain formal features that characterize most interpretations of the doctrine.  Usually revelation is interpreted as having both an objective and a subjective dimension.  The objective dimension refers to what is revealed, while the subjective dimension refers to how revelation is received.  The precise way in which revelation is interpreted often depends on which of the dimensions is given primary emphasis (Ibid.).

The objective dimension of revelation (what is revealed) may be construed in various ways.  It may be understood as proposition, an infallible teaching of scripture, the Gospel or Word of God, God's will toward the world, the personal being of God, or the moral order.  These different interpretations of what is revealed yield distinctive doctrines of revelation, and not surprisingly, different interpretations of Christian faith.  If the object of revelation is understood to be the Word of God in the person of Jesus Christ, faith will take a different form than if the object of revelation is understood to be a proposition or a doctrine, regardless of where it is found it is found (in scripture or in tradition).  Some versions of the former interpretation tend to emphasize the  effect of revelation-the Spirit's gift of saving faith-while some versions of the latter seek a more objective basis for faith in an inspired scripture or church (Ibid.).

In our continued search, things will become clearer as we sketch two models of revelation in classical theology.  They are: 

Revelation as illumination of the intellect 

Revelation as encounter with the Word and Spirit of God  

In both of these models, we will discover that  some interpretations  lean in the direction of the objective, and others that lean in the direction of the subjective (Ibid. p. 117).

En fin, our inquiry on the doctrine of revelation leads us to ask if there is a distinction between the objective and the subjective in divine revelation, or if they are one and the same.  We will learn to identify or distinguish between the "giver" and the "given."  We will also deal with whether the way we appropriate revelation is the way that God intended or wants us to appropriate it.

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

Dr. Juan A. Carmona

Former Visiting Professor of Theology

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 

THE DOCTRINE OF REVELATION 

One of the things that is unique in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition is that of revelation.  By revelation, we are referring to the notion of God's self-disclosure in history.  In this tradition, God takes the initiative to reveal Godself to humankind through Scripture, tradition, and experience.  In some respects, Christian theology builds on the tradition of revelation in Jewish theology, and Islam builds on the tradition of revelation of both Jewish and Christian theology.  

Traditionally when Christians have attempted to explain what they know about God, and how they have access to that knowledge, they have appealed to something called "revelation."  In most versions of Christianity, revelation has served as the epistemological (knowledge base) for theology, that is, an appeal often has been made to revelation in order to account for knowledge of God.  Today, however, it is no longer clear what revelation means or how it provides knowledge of God.  Revelation is sometimes understood to refer to  dramatic moments, such as Paul's experience on the road to Damascus, or highly emotional events of the sort that take place at revivals.  While these interpretations of revelation are not uncommon, they are unfortunate because they obscure what revelation has traditionally meant and the important role that it has played in Christian faith and theology.  Furthermore, these misinterpretations of revelation are symptomatic of much deeper problems besetting any attempt to reinterpret revelation in the contemporary world (George Stroup in "Revelation."  Christian Theology: An Introduction to its Traditions and Tasks.  Peter C. Hodgson and Robert H. King, eds.  Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994. p. 114).

Revelation has generally been understood to be correlative with faith.  Christians feel compelled to talk about faith in terms of "revelation" because they believe that faith is not the result of human discovery or inquiry.  Faith does not discover its object; it is on the contrary, constituted by it.  Christian faith is human response to what has been unveiled or disclosed by faith's object.  The unveiling or disclosure is what theology refers to as "revelation (Ibid.)"

So, in essence, what we are talking about relative to revelation, is the interaction between the one who initiates the revelation, and the one (or ones) who respond to it.  God is the initiator and humankind is the respondent by way of inquiry and research.  

Three aspects of this broad interpretation of revelation are worth noting.  First, revelation means an unveiling or, to use a more contemporary idiom, a "disclosure."  When revelation takes place, a veil is dropped and that which had been masked or hidden from view is disclosed (Stroup, op. cit. p. 114).

Second, the event in which this unveiling occurs cannot be initiated by human activity.  The initiator of the event is not the individual who witnesses the disclosure, but rather the agent  disclosed or unveiled in the event.  The very use of the word "unveiledness" and "disclosure" suggests that what makes itself known in a revelatory event is the stuff of mystery.  Revelation yields not the solution to a problem, or the answer to a difficult question, but the unveiling of a mystery (Ibid.).

Third, although faith is a human act, revelation is not.  Because revelation refers to an event in which what is made known exceeds the grasp of human inquiry, the event is attributed to God's grace.  Whatever else the doctrine of revelation is about, it is a statement about the grace of God.  Revelation is not at the disposal of human inquiry or control, and consequently, it becomes an even only by means of grace (Ibid.).

NOTE: It should be indicated, that in the Pauline-Agustinian-Calvinist tradition, faith itself is a gift of God, divinely given to those who God has predestined to eternal life.  In other Christian traditions, faith is a volitional act on the part of those who hear the proclamation of the Gospel, and subsequently, those who willfully respond in faith to the proclamation, are elected to eternal life.

While most interpretations of revelation share at least some of these formal features, there are also important differences between the classical descriptions of revelation and various contemporary forms of the doctrine.  These differences are so severe that in many respects contemporary interpretations of revelation bear only a formal resemblance to their classical predecessors, and sometimes not even that.  One reason for the sharp differences between classical and contemporary interpretations of revelation and for the present disarray in contemporary theology is that revelation, the traditional foundation for knowledge of God, has become problematic; it is no longer clear what revelation means and whether revelation provides theology with an adequate basis for its claims about God.  Why this alteration in the interpretation of revelation has taken place and what it implies about the future of theology will be the major concerns of this ongoing inquiry (Stroup, op. cit. p. 115).  

Since theology is an ongoing constructive task, we will be subject to redefinitions and redactions in terms of the language which we use.  Because theology is tentative, we remain open to ongoing revelation and to how that revelation is defined and understood.  We keep in mind, during this journey of inquiry that theology is a humanly-generated construction, and that subsequently, it is subject to redaction and revision relative to its approaches, methodology, and hermeneutical usage.

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

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Visiting Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD (CONTINUED) 

THE ENCOUNTER WITH OTHER RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS 

What are the possible new issues confronting Christian theology at the present time?  We can say that there are various issues, and yet, in examining them, we will discover that many of them are not so new. Many of them are really a regurgitation and resurrection of issues that have been  brought up in the past.  We may think that they have been "laid to rest," just to find out that they were simply buried and "put on hold" until another time.  

One of the most, if not the most important one is the encounter with other religious traditions.  Some may say that it is not a valid theological pursuit to engage with other religions, because from our Christian theological standpoint, these other traditions are either totally false or "partially true."  As Christians we may be so arrogant as to think that we have the truth of God "sewn up in our pockets."  That would amount to, in my humble opinion as both a believer and as a theologian, to presumptuousness and also to Christian theological imperialism. 

In our present situation, religious faiths, like political and economic systems, encounter one another regularly and intimately.  Since this encounter of the religions, in the last several decades, has become an omnipresent reality, the relation of Christian theology to other, non-Christian modes of "theology" has emerged as a burning issue.  Not only have Christianity and Christians "encountered" other religions, they have also encountered this religions as bearing power and and as embodying vital, healing, redemptive forces providing unique illumination  and grace to our ailing cultural life and our somewhat impoverished existence.  No longer, therefore, is it possible for Christians to declare other faiths either devoid of truth (as did orthodoxy) or primitive or less developed steppingstones to the absoluteness of Christianity (as did the early liberals). The suggestion that within other religions the promise of salvation is present and also the truth is experienced is now admitted and affirmed by many.  But if that be so, what does it mean for the uniqueness of Christian revelation, for the finality of Christ's incarnation, and atonement, for the salvation of non-Christians-and a thousand other important theological questions (Gilkey, p. 111)?

I know that many Christians will fall back on the passages of Jesus saying that He is "the way, the truth, and the life," and Paul saying that there is only "one mediator between God and humankind," and Peter saying that "there is no other name given under Heaven whereby we must be saved."  Having said that, we can easily pose the question as to just exactly what do those passages mean? Does that mean that the millions of people who lived and died before the Christian era have no hope because they never heard the name of Jesus the Christ.  Did God condemn them to eternal damnation for lack of knowledge?  Or can we say that there are universal elements in those passages which we have not cared to explore, taking the easy and dismissive way out?  Is Jesus the "Cosmic" Christ who transcends all religious doctrine, dogma, and theology, or is He restricted to the Christian faith? Does a person have to shed their prior faith and religious tradition in order to have a relationship with God through Christ?  

Understandably, most of the new debate on these matters has centered on the crucial questions of special revelation and Christology. And many have assumed that that, were these christological doctrines to be liberalized or toned down, the issues vis-a-vis other religions would dissipate. Important divergences (say, with Hinduism and Buddhism) appear in connection with every significant theological or philosophical question, from the that of the nature of reality and our knowledge of it, through the nature of human being and its "problem," to the understanding of history and final salvation (Ibid., p. 112)

In conclusion, it is safe to say that the encounter of religions with one another and their subsequent dialogues with one another will effect radical changes in the discussion of God carried out by every present form of Christian theology.  To predict what new directions these changes will represent is really only to state what our preferences are, where we think the understanding of God "ought to go," granted this encounter.  As for the direction it will in fact go, we have no insight except to suggest that, even more than an encounter between Catholicism and Protestantism, a close encounter with the other religions will effect noteworthy changes in every recognizable form of contemporary discussion about God (Ibid.).

We might choose to remained entrenched in our theological cages, believing that there is no "truth" outside of them, or we might open our cage to engage with people in other cages, who together with us are in search of truth.  We might "close down" on dialogue with non-Christians, or we may opt to engage in a "give and take" dialogical exchange.

This theologian/writer opts for the latter, believing that no religious tradition has a monopoly on God, and that God-in-Christ, comes to us in ways that God alone determines, regardless of how obstinate, reticent, and stubborn we may be.  Let God be God.

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

Dr. Juan A. Carmona

Past Visiting Professor of Theology 

Tainan Theological College/Seminary  

 THE DOCTRINE OF GOD (CONTINUED)

In spite of the difficulties relative to defining the doctrine and idea of God, the quest continues to obtain  an understanding  of what and who God is.  Because we cannot understand God in God's full essence and nature,  is no reason to give up on trying to articulate an idea of God that makes it possible for us to acknowledge and affirm the existence of God, in spite of the reality that we are "living with the questions."

All the answers that can be offered to the myriad of questions concerning the nature of God, each answer has its power and persuasive adherents.  Those who emphasize the knowability of God by reason have offered one version or another of the classical "proofs" of God: the cosmological, from the existence of the finite world, the teleological, from the order of the finite world, the ontological, from the implications of the concept of God itself as a concept of a perfect and so necessary being ; and the moral argument, from the implications of moral existence.  These widely variant forms of philosophical approach have been united in in arguing that any theology intellectually respectable enough to speak to modern, intelligent people must represent its religious heritage in the intellectual form of such a rationally grounded philosophical theology.  Without such a philosophical base for our knowledge of God, our certainty of the divine reality and our comprehension of the relation of this concept to our other concepts will be seriously lacking.  As a consequence, the idea of God will increasingly be regarded as merely subjective and idiosyncratic, a private matter of "feeling," and therefore unreal, a private image unrelated to to the width of all experience, vacant of content, and in the end meaningless (Gilkey, op. cit. p. 101).

There are those who have shared a jaundiced view of culture's reasoning  and of its philosophical "proofs"; on religious grounds they have emphasized the transcendence and mystery of God.  They are not at all unaware that most contemporary philosophy has come to regard metaphysical speculation and all proofs of a divine reality as representing a dubious and uncritical use of reason, and therefore itself devoid of certainty, objectivity, or meaning.  They also have sensed the ideological and invalid character of such "modern" thinking.  For them modern thought, far from providing an objective and valid ground for our ultimate faith, itself represents a significant aspect of the modern problem, needing itself new principles of illumination if it is to help our religious existence (Ibid.).

More important, the main problem of the knowledge of God, they insist, is not that we cannot know God with our finite minds, but that in fact secretly we do not all wish to know God.  Thus natural theology represents the persistent and systematic attempt of self-sufficient people to create a "God" of their own and so to avoid relationship with or knowledge of the real God.  A philosophical God, the product of our own metaphysical thinking and the construct of our own wayward modern wisdom, may be infinitely more comfortable for us to live with.  Nevertheless, such a "God: is a far cry from the real God who confronts us in judgment and may confront us therefore also in grace.  Furthermore, the very center of Christian promise resides in the re-creation of what we are, and of how and what we think, not in their mere extension and solidification.  Thus God-not "our own words to ourselves"-must speak to us in revelation. Such an event of revelation provides the sole basis and the sole norm for the religious existence of the Christian community from which and for wish valid and legitimate theology speaks.  To be sure, theology does not speak to the world as well as to the church, but in its speech it must seek to represent not the wisdom of the world, but the message of the Gospel, not the word of humanity, but the Word of God. Theology may use philosophy in explicating this message in coherent and adequate form.  Its primal obligation, however, is to be faithful to revelation and not to pressures of public rationality as the world defines rationality.  Faith therefore precedes and controls the use of reason in theology, i.e. "I believe in order to understand," rather than I understand in order to believe" (Ibid., pp. 101-102)

Therefore, we understand that the doctrine of God has its rational component and foundation.  Having said that, we deal with the issue of whether theology constructs God in a human image, or whether the human, as the Scriptures state, are created in the image and likeness of God.  Theology also has its revelational component, i.e. bases itself on the divine self-disclosure, which comes at God's initiative.  Theology sees to it that the language it uses about the divine is a a language of concepts and terms that are understandable to whose who are engaged in the theological task, whether they be lay, ordained, or professional in their engagement.

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

Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Visiting Professor of Theology

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 

MODERN REFORMULATIONS OF THE DOCTRINE OF GOD

The doctrine of God in Christian theology has been formulated and reformulated time and again.  The formulations tend to be a response to the Church's self-understanding and to its understanding of God in different times and in different social contexts.  

The question about how God is to be known-by rational inquiry of some sort, through religious experience, or through a revelation responded by faith-has been a traditional and recurrent question throughout Christian history.  In that history, there have been those who, while denying neither the efficacy, nor the significance of mystical experience or of revelation, have insisted that the existence of God can be established by philosophical argument and so the nature of God known and defined, at least in part, by reason alone, that is, by "natural theology." On the other side have been those who distrusted philosophical reason as "pagan" or at least as misguided; correspondingly they have argued that the true and living God, the God of Abraham, Jesus, and the Church, can only be known in revelation.  As a consequence for them a valid understanding of the nature and intentions of God must proceed from revelation and not also from philosophical reasoning. While the developments in modern culture have not effaced this traditional issue and its contesting parties, still these developments have to some extent effected changes in the way each side argues its case (Langdon Gilkey, p. 99). 

So,  the question remains "How do we know God?"  Is God known through self-disclosure?  Is God known through experience, both collective and individual?  Is God known through philosophical speculation?  Is God known through rational deduction?  Each of these perspectives have been submitted as the dominant or exclusive way of knowing and understanding the divine.

There are three points of difference submitted by Langdon Gilkey.  They are:

1.  The question of the possibility of a concept of God, the most radical question about God's reality has come to the fore.  Thus each side, the natural theologians and the revelationists, find themselves more concerned than their predecessors with the source or point of origin (in a "godless" natural and historical world) of this idea in philosophy or in the experience of revelation respectively, that is, with the question "How do we come to know God?' as well as with the question "What do we know about God in the way we do know it?" (Gilkey, op. cit., p.99).  

2.  Though the sharpness and difficulty of the question of the reality of God and of the intelligibility of that concept has made a natural theology eminently desirable if not necessary for modern believers, still the drift-not to say the flow tide-of modern rationality away from metaphysical speculation has raised increased difficulties for that enterprise in modern culture.  Whereas in many epochs only the use of philosophy in theology and especially at the idea of a natural theology, now is the philosophical community more than the theological community that raises questions about the possibility of metaphysics and of natural theology of any sort.  In modernity (as possibly the end of the Hellenic era) natural theologians have had to contend with philosophical resistance to their speculative, metaphysical labors as well as with religious-theological resistance, and they face the bizarre and arduous task, not forced upon their predecessors, of presenting a reasoned defense of metaphysical reason even before they begin their quest via such reason for God (Ibid., pp. 99-100).

3.  The modern critique of authority, the emphatic denial of absolute authority to any document or institution, has transformed the interpretation of revelation and its cognitive meaning.  Prior to this the "revealed faith" could refer to sets of prepositions in the scriptural corpus or the dogmatic tradition, and how one "knew God" via either one could be plainly and intelligibly stated.  With the modern critique of scriptural and dogmatic authority and of a "propositional view of revelation," at best revelation comes through the words of scripture and tradition and is received not in terms of objective propositions but on the "religious" level as an experience or "feeling," as an "encounter" resulting in a personal acknowledgment or a decision of faith, that is, as an existential reality and activity, so to speak, below the conceptual and ordinary cognitive level.  The obvious problem of a cognitive event taking place in a prelinguistic, preconceptual, and preexperiential "experience" thus plagues contemporary revelationists as it did their predecessors.  We should note that neither one of the traditional avenues to the knowledge of God, metaphysics or revelation, is in the least straight and smooth in our own day (Ibid. p. 100).

So, as in ancient times, and especially in as in the days of emerging Christianity, we are faced with the challenge and the task of postulating,  editing, redacting, and revisiting our formulations for understanding the divine.  We ask ourselves if our notion of God is culture-based, faith-based, or a combination of several approaches and foundations.  Is our approach to the "knowledge" of God a one-track approach or is it multi-pronged?  Our attempts to know and understand God constitute the journey of "theology in transit."

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

Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 MODERN CONSCIOUSNESS ON GOD 

At the start of the post-Reformation period there were two dominant conceptions of God, one Catholic and the other Protestant.  They differed markedly in the categories with which God was described,  yet to our modern eyes they exhibited the same paradoxical character: the Catholic conception of an absolute, purely actual, changeless being "illegitimately" related and the Protestant conception of an eternal sovereign, divine will ordaining and effecting all temporal events from eternity, thus again "illegitimately" related and even responsive to historical crises and human needs.  Understandably, subsequent modern on the issue of God has, at least since the seventeenth century, been largely constituted by philosophical and theological criticism of these two inherited conceptions, and thence characterized either by humanist and naturalist rejection of the concept entirely or by a more or less radical reformulation of it.  Perhaps the best way to examine this extensive process is to remind ourselves first of the grounds in modern (Enlightenment and and post-Enlightenment) sensibility for this criticism,  and second to describe some of the characteristic forms of these reformulations as those forms appear in the present theological discussion (Langdon Gilkey in "God," p. 96).  

So in essence, what we find is a "clash" or competing conceptions of God during this period.  One conception (Catholic) was rooted in a synthesis of tradition, experience, Scripture, and philosophy, while the other (Protestant) was rooted in the primacy of Scripture, tradition, and experience, in that order, with a subsequent embracing of philosophy and other branches of human knowledge as ancillary.  Both sides attempted to be faithful to what they believed was the faith delivered once and for all by Jesus and HIs Apostles.   Both sides believed that indeed, their position was "Apostolic" in nature.

THE ENLIGHTENMENT CRITIQUE 

The grounds for the modern critique of the idea of God have been essentially three:

1.  The new emphasis on experience as the sole relevant and dependable source for valued and meaningful concepts and the sole ground for the testing of those concepts. (Gilkey, op. cit. pp. 96-97).

2.  Corresponding shift to the subject as the sole seat of legitimate authority in all matters pertaining to truth and as the sole originating source of significant moral and/or personal action (Ibid., p. 97).  

Finally, since the principle of authority in matters of truth and morals has moved radically inward to the subject, all external forms of authority are radically questioned, especially those coming from Church traditions or Scripture (Ibid.).

In modern-day Protestantism, there is a question as to what really is the sole or primary authority.  Some Protestants believe in the "Sola Scriptura (the Scripture alone)" principle, while others believe in the "Prima Scriptura (the primacy of Scripture and secondary status of experience and tradition)" principle.  In Pentecostal theology, we have a what I would call a "theological conundrum."  While Pentecostals as a whole subscribe to the notion of the Scripture being "the only rule of faith and practice," there is a strong emphasis on the experience of the Holy Spirit being an authority in and of itself.  So far example, if someone calls out an aspect of Pentecostal theology to be at "variance" with scriptural revelation, the answer just might be "Well the Holy Spirit has revealed to me (or to us) otherwise."  It appears on the surface, at least, that in Pentecostal theology, there is room for a private experience with the Holy Spirit superseding the words of Scripture, though the claim is still made that the Bible is our only source of faith and practice.  

Thus, the question of the reality of God, even of the possibility of the concept in any of its forms, has been sharply raised in modern culture.  On the one hand, a powerful "naturalistic " viewpoint, which finds belief in God anachronistic and incredible and thus a relation to God either offensive or irrelevant, has arisen and spread pervasively throughout the Western and Communist worlds into almost every class.  From this viewpoint "nature," as understood by science, is the seat and source of all that is real; men and women are the source of values, and their needs and wishes are the sole criterion of values.  Thus this world and its history represent the sole locus of hope.  Whether in socialistic or capitalistic form, or as theorized by Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Jean-Paul Sartre or Albert Camus-or by most if not all the leaders of the scientific and and philosophical communities-this naturalistic humanism has dominated the cultural scene.  As a consequence its powerful presence has posed the central intellectual issues for theologians concerned with the defense and reformulation of the concept  of God (Gilkey, op. cit., p. 97).  

So here we are faced with the question of whether our theology is a revealed theology or a humanly constructed theology.  Personally, I find it difficult to submit to that dichotomy.  The reason for that is that even if we state that our theology is a "revealed" one, we cannot bypass the element of human filtering and mediation.  In other words, we cannot treat theology is if were written in Heaven and thrown down to Earth.  Whether we subscribe to the Catholic (and here I am including Eastern Orthodoxy) notion of God, or the Protestant notion of God, the agency of human mediation cannot be either bypassed or ignored.  While we might believe that divine revelation contains "absolutes," we cannot claim or pretend that our appropriation of divine revelation is either absolute, inerrant, or infallible.  In the final analysis, theology is a human construct, and subsequently is, as my theology mentor and professor at New Brunswick Theological Seminary said many times, "tentative."  

Whether or not "naturalistic humanism," a non-religious understanding of reality generally and of human existence, is a lasting possibility has also become problematic in the modern period.  This possibility of a totally "secular" world view was assumed in the French Enlightenment and taken for granted by most of the nineteenth-century critics of religion (e.g., Aguste Comte, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, et. al).  However, recent history has seemed to show that as traditional religion wanes as the symbolic center of a community's life, "ideology' tends to take its place, and ideology with important religious aspects or dimensions.  Thus even if God has receded from the center of Western (or even Eastern) consciousness, "the religious" has apparently not-for the political and social worlds of Western culture are structured ideologically, and thus its major conflicts are still inspired by competing forms of religiosity (Gilkey, op. cit. pp 97-98).  

En fin, regardless of the root or source of our conception of God,  our conceptions result in enclosed and even entrenched ideologies.  Very few of us, if any, are open to the idea that there is truth in other conceptions of God, especially if those conceptions prevail and are rampant in faith communities other than the Christian Church.  We treat our conceptions of God as if we Christians have it "all sown up" in our pockets, and that any opposing concepts are demonic and heretical.

Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 THE SYMBOL OF THE TRINITY 

In the early patristic period, with Justyn Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Origen, the absolute aspect of God was unequivocally affirmed and regarded as designated by the traditional biblical symbol of the "Father," the utterly primordial, unoriginate, changeless, eternal , and unrelated source of all else.  The related aspect of God, equally central to the life and piety of Christian faith, was consequently expressed through the symbol of the "Son" or the Logos, the principle of divine outreach and self-manifestation (almost a "second God," or as Justin and Origen put it) through which the transcendent Father. changeless, and inactive, created the world, was revealed in it, and acted to redeem it.  The Holy Spirit completed the relationship by assuring the presence of the divine will in the community and in persons.  Thus at the outset of the philosophical career of the Christian God, the symbol of the Trinity served to provide conceptual expression for the dialectical polarity of the Christian God as at once the self-sufficient creator of all, transcendent to all t                                         finitude (Father), and as the active, revealing, loving redeemer (Son), present in grace and power to God's people (Holy Spirit)  Landon Gilkey "God."  Christian Theology: An Introduction To Its Traditions and Tasks.  Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994, p. pp. 93-94.

By the inexcusable and possibly ironic logic of events and ideas, however, the important mediatorial role of the symbol of the Trinity soon disintegrated.  As the doctrine of the Arians quickly made evident, a Son or Logos that genuinely mediates between the absolute  and the relative and that is related to the creaturely, the temporal, and the changing in time can be itself unregenerate, eternal, changeless, nor fully "God" if God is defined solely by the truths of a transcendent absolute. An original, related, mediating principle is by that token hardly God, but in monotheism such a subordinate, semiabsolute, and partly divine being, however, "good," is inadmissible and partly divine being as representing incipient polytheism.  Besides, if Jesus Christ is not fully God, how can He save? These unanswerable arguments of Athanasius pushed the conception of the entire divine Trinity in an absolutist direction; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were at Nicea and again later at Constantinople all defined as fully divine, that is, as essentially negating every creaturely attribute: temporality, potentiality, changeableness, relatedness, and dependence.  As a consequence, the Trinity  ceased to be the central symbolic expression of the polarity of divine relatedness.  To put this point more precisely, a distinction now appears in post-Nicean theology between the essential Trinity, (the "three-in-oneness" characteristic of the eternal God's inner life) and the economic Trinity (the "three-in-oneness" characteristic manifested and expressed externally in God's creative, revealing, and redemptive activity in relation to the world).  Clearly this distinction, in contrast to the pre-Nicean concept of the Trinity, where a "halfway absolute" Son mediated between the absolute Father and the world, covered over rather than resolved the fundamental problem or dialectic of the Christian concept;t of God, namely, how the absolute God can be related to the relative world.  Now in the new form the same old question arises: How can the essentially trinitarian God in whom Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are alike eternal, changeless, and impassive participate in all the actions and reactions in relation to changing temporality entailed in the economic Trinity (Ibid., pp. 94-95)?  

As pointed out previously, the Church was not advocating for a polytheistic doctrine, i.e. a doctrine of multiple gods.  Neither was the  Church advocating for a doctrine of semi-humans or semi-deities.  While the doctrine of the Trinity was not stated explicitly in the New Testament, the seeds of the doctrine was there in a latent way.  The doctrine of the Trinity was that God was  revealed in the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, whether one wants to take these to mean that the three were distinct as to person while being fully divine, or distinct as to historical roles.  

As the appearance of the distinction makes plain, at no point did Christian theology allow itself to deny God's continual relatedness to and activity in the world of change.  How could it, since the entire corpus of Christian belief from creation to redemption, very aspect of its ritual of Word and Sacrament, its entire sacred law and its sanctions, and every facet of its piety of prayer, miracles, and special angelic and saintly powers depended on the reality in past, present, and future of that divine presence and divine activity?  Nevertheless, that a deep theological problem remained for the classical theological conception of God is also evident.  Once God was defined in theology as "pure actuality,"  "eternal being," "changeless," and thus quite void of potentiality, alterability, passivity, or temporality, it became virtually impossible, if not contradictory, to express intelligibly the obvious relatedness and mutuality of God to the changing world necessitated by the Scriptural witness and by the structures of the Christian religion itself (Gilkey, op. cit., p. 95). 

One of the major problems in theology relative to the person and work of God, is the inevitable use of anthropomorphic language, i.e. attributing human-like qualities to God.  In addition, the matter is complicated because of the fact that in the early stages of the construction of Christian theology, just like we previously encounter in Hebrew/Jewish theology, and subsequently in Islamic theology, God is spoken of in masculine terms, an issue which is challenged and questioned by feminist theology.  Moreover, the doctrine of God in Christian theology is complicated by the doctrine of the Trinity which on the surface, at least, appears to be an advocacy for polytheism, or at the very least, tritheism, i.e. the notion of three deities.  When we take into consideration the integration between Christian theology and Western philosophy (namely Greek philosophy), the problem is further compounded by the fact that God is depicted as detached from the world and totally unaffected by what goes on in the world.

Although with the Reformation the philosophical or metaphysical definition of God as absolute, changeless, eternal being or actuality radically receded in prominence in theology, the same problems remained.  In the "biblical" theology of the major reformers, God is conceived centrally through personal rather than metaphysical categories: as almighty or sovereign power, as righteous or holy will, as gracious and reconciling love.  The "ontological" concepts of self-sufficiency remain, but what now determines the shape of the doctrine of God in each reformer is the center of Reformation piety or religion, namely the new emphasis on the priority and sole sovereignty of divine grace in redemption;tion, on the utter unworthiness and inactivity of the recipient of grace, and finally on the absolute priority and decisiveness of divine election (Gilkey, op. cit. p. 95). 

What is here eternal and changeless is the divine decree destining, yes predestining, each creature to grace or to its opposite.  The first cause of being, that led Thomas to the concept of pure actuality has become the first "cause" of grace, leading to the concept of the eternal, and changeless divine decrees.  Thus for primarily religious rather than metaphysical reasons, the same paradox tending toward contradiction appears: an eternal, hidden, and yet all-sovereign divine electing will on the one hand, and the affirmation of the presence and activity of God in relation to a real and not sham sequence of historical events and of human decisions on the other hand.  Although it was Calvin especially who drew out most clearly the implications of this new paradox based on Reformation piety rather than on traditional philosophy, still the same paradox in this new form is evident and fundamental for the theologies of Luther and Zwingli as well (Ibid., pp. 95-96).

Like all other aspects of Christian theology, the doctrine of the Deity has its challenges, and difficulties.  Theology is an ongoing task, and the component of the doctrine of the divine, is a part and parcel of that task.

Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

 

HOW THE EARLY CHRISTIANS THOUGHT OF GOD 

We may inquire as to what the concept of God was in the Early Church.  In other words, we might pose the question as to what are the differences or the similarities in the way that the Early Church conceived of God in comparison to how God is thought of in contemporary Christianity.  Landon Gilkey invites us to explore this.

The origins of the understanding of God lie in the Hebrew and Christian religious traditions,  especially in their sacred scriptures.  In what we call the Old Testament, God or Yahweh is "undeniably," and "jealously" one, and  transcendent to all the limited and special forces and powers of our experience of nature, society, or self.  On the other hand, Yahweh's central characteristic or, better, mode of experienced being or self-manifestation is a concern for and relation to history and especially to a particular people in history-Israel.  Although God manifests power and glory throughout the vast scope of nature, the main area for the divine "works" is the particular sequence of historical events related to the calling, establishment, nurture, and protection of the chosen people.  In this activity in history, moreover, God is revealed as a moral or righteous God, the source of the law, and quick to punish those, even chosen ones, who defy this law.  Yahweh is, however, also a God of mercy, patience, faithfulness,  and grace, since according to the prophets, despite Israel's obvious unworthiness and continued betrayal of her covenant with God, God promises to redeem Israel in the future.  This God of history, covenant, judgment, and promised redemption is throughout assumed to be, and often clearly affirmed to be, the ruler of all events.  All agree that the divine purposes shape, reshape, and in the end will complete history.  Finally, by inevitable implication, this sovereign Lord of history is seen to be also the creator and ruler of the entire cosmos (Langdon Gilkey in "God." Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks, pp. 91-92).   

In essence, Gilkey's presentation of God in Church History is one of reflection of the conception of God in the Scriptures.  Whether the Hebrew/Jewish and Christian communities derived their conception of God from their Scriptures, or the Scriptures reflected their conception of God in the period of the oral tradition, is very debatable.  

These themes in the notion of God are continued, albeit with modifications in the New Testament: God is one God, a God concerned with history, judgment, and redemption, the God who is Creator, and Redeemer, Alpha and Omega.  Only now the central manifestation of  the living God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the "Son," Jesus of Nazareth, through whom the divine righteous and loving will for human beings is revealed, the divine judgments made known, the divine power to save even from death effected, and in whose speedy return God's sovereignty over all creation will be fully and visibly established.  The presence of God, moreover, is now less in the temple and in the law as in the Spirit, dwelling in the hearts and minds of the Christian community and in their witness and hopeful expectation.  Thus appears a new set of Christian symbols  helping to define "God," and the divine activity, not only creation, and redemption, covenant, law, and messianic promise, but now also Son/Logos, incarnation, atonement, Holy Spirit, Parousia, and, as a summation of these "new concepts, Trinity (Ibid., p 92).

The concept of "Trinity" should be clarified.  The Church was not adopting a polytheistic view of three deities, nor a view of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, running amok, each doing their own thing, but rather a view of God's self-disclosure coming in the notion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, being three different modes of being in the deity, each of which retained the divine nature.  

In briefly tracing the development of this complex notion from the beginning of the Christian era  to our own times, we should recall that once Western culture became Christian (A.D. 325), the concept of God became the symbolic center for every aspect of life and for the understanding of nature, society, and human existence generally.  Consequently, it became not only the object of  endless philosophical and theological speculation, but also the foundation for every special discipline of thought, every representative mode of action, and all important social institutions.  Thus, inevitably,  this notion and the modes of thinking that expressed it made union with the sciences, and ethical, legal, and political theories, and above all, with the philosophy of each epoch (Gilkey, op. cit., p. 92).

During the crucial formative centuries of Christendom, the dominant intellectual inheritance through which Western life understood itself and its world was that of Greco-Roman philosophy.  Thus it was natural that during this long period, the biblical notion of God outlined was given its main conceptual shape with help first of Platonism and Stoicism, and then during the High Middle  Ages, of Aristotelianism.  In this philosophical tradition, especially in its later Hellenistic stages (200 B.C.- A.D. 400), the sense of the reality, value, or meaning of the changing, temporal, material world, and of earthly human and historical life in time noticeably weakened.  Correspondingly, for this tradition, the divine was precisely that which infinitely transcends change, time, matter, flesh, and history (Ibid., pp. 92-93).

As a quite natural consequence, those transcendent and absolute aspects or implications of the biblical or implications of the biblical creator and ruler were, in the developing conceptualization of God from A.D. 150 to 400, enlarged and extended: God became eternal in the sense of utterly non-temporal, necessary in the sense of absolute non-contingency, self-sufficient in the sense of absolute independence, changeless in the sense of participating in and relating to no change, purely spiritual instead of in any fashion material, unaffected and thus seemingly unrelated and even unreliable to the world.  It would, however, be false to conclude that the absoluteness of the patristic conception of God stemmed entirely from Hellenistic philosophy, though it expressed in the latter's categories.  It also stemmed from the character of patristic piety.  Since that piety emphasized, as did most Hellenistic spirituality, the victory of the incorruptible, immortal, and changeless principle of deity over the corruptible, mortal, and passing character of creaturely life, the divine is and must be that which transcends and conquers the passingness of mortal flesh (Ibid, p. 93). 

En fin, we can see that the concept of God in Christianity, has undergone evolution.  It has gone, if I may say so, from the simple to the complex.  Only time will tell if it goes back to the simple.

Rev. Dr. Juan A. Carmona 

Past Professor of Theology

Tainan Theological College/Seminary 

  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