Scripture, Doctrine, & Theology, Part One

I intended to post this sooner but, after a surprisingly long run, I finally succumbed to COVID-19. I now understand the “brain fog” everyone has been talking about. This semester is off to an interesting start, as is this substack, I suppose.

After perusing a few substacks, I decided to open each lecture with a few introductory comments. Or, at least, I decided to open this one with a few introductory comments.

Today is the Feast of the Presentation, the day we celebrate the Holy family’s journey to the Temple to present Jesus and Mary for ritual purification, in line with Leviticus 12 and Exodus 13. It’s a curious event in Christ’s life, and in Mary’s. I’ve been pondering the latter a bit today. Think about it: why does this woman who the angel says is “full of grace” need to be purified?

No surprise, the curiosity occurred to St. Thomas Aquinas. No surprise, he finds rich fruit in contemplating it.

As the fullness of grace flowed from Christ on to His Mother, so it was becoming that the mother should be like her Son in humility: for God giveth grace to the humble, as is written James 4:6. And therefore, just as Christ, though not subject to the Law, wished, nevertheless, to submit to circumcision and the other burdens of the Law, in order to give an example of humility and obedience; and in order to show His approval of the Law; and, again, in order to take away from the Jews an excuse for calumniating Him: for the same reasons He wished His Mother also to fulfill the prescriptions of the Law, to which, nevertheless, she was not subject.

Check out the full treatment here: https://aquinas.cc/la/en/~ST.III.Q37.A4.

Alright, on to the real business here - a first installment on a lecture treating scripture, doctrine, theology, and their relations.

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Let’s begin with three questions:

1.     What is theology?

2.     What is its relationship to Scripture?

3.     What is doctrine?

We’ll proceed as follows. First, I will offer a rough, non-controversial definition of theology. Second, with that non-controversial definition, we will consider what Scripture is. Third, in light of what we discover about Scripture, let us turn back to theology, and make a start at clarifying the relationship between theology and Scripture. Fourth, we will encounter a problem, which will help us to clarify the concept of doctrine. Fifth, in light of what I have said about doctrine, I will turn, finally to give a clearer account of what theology is. Finally, I will attempt a summative description of these three and their interrelations: Scripture, doctrine, theology.

I.  I offer, preliminarily, a non-controversial definition. Theology is a compound word, formed by the combination of two Greek words: theos (God) & logos (word). So theology is speech about God, or God-talk. This is theology in a most deflationary sense – any and every utterance which brings with it the concept of God is theology.

I am doing theology when I utter, “The Lord of Glory was crucified.” And I am also doing theology when I say, “What a lovely creature my daughter Lucy is!”

Though I am not doing theology when I say “In a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides,” I am when I say “God has set the world up such that in a right triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the square of the other two sides.” Though every utterance is itself a creature, which is to say it is itself an effect of God’s liberality and power, it is not the case that every utterance is theological.

We’ve helpfully decluttered a number of utterances as non-theological. But we have not yet cleared enough away for the task before us. We seek to understand not simply any speech about God, but Christian speech about God. When my son tells me, “Diana is the goddess of the hunt,” he’s not doing Christian theology. But when St. Augustine tells me “Diana is actually a daimon that must be exsufflated,” he is. (Have fun googling “daimons” and “exsufflation.”)

The distinction does not consist in the truth of the assertion. If my son’s classics professor asks, “Who is the goddess of the hunt?” he ought not reply, “A daimon,” but instead, “Diana.” It is a statement of fact that in Roman mythology, Diana is the goddess of the hunt, whether or not she is any such thing in reality.

The example suffices to make an important point: though any utterance which brings with it the concept of God is theology, not all such utterances are Christian theology. What distinguishes Christian theology from any other theology is the concept of God brought in with the utterance. We can say, for now, that Christian theologians seek to utter words about the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

II.  Theology, then, is speech about God, and Christian theology speech about the Christian God. Though this is a rather rough definition, it is nevertheless serviceable for explaining what Christians mean when they call their sacred text “Scripture.”

To say that a text is Scripture is to say that the text requires speech about God, or theology, in order to give an adequate account of the text. This is a peculiarity of such texts. For many texts, we go on talking about them without any need to speak about God. We can go on perfectly fine reading tax forms without appeal to God-talk.

Likewise, it is not clear that we need to do any theologizing in order to talk about A Farewell to Arms. That is, we can go on perfectly fine describing Ernest Hemingway, the First World War, the Italian theatre, 1920s America, the history of the war novel, and so on. There would be no haunting absence.

But to read the Scriptures in this way is something altogether different. Of course, we can talk about the biblical text in the way we talk about A Farewell to Arms. We can, for instance, speculate the book of Judges was composed as part of deuteronomistic history during the reign of King Josiah, late in the 7^th century BC. We can go on saying such things for a lifetime. But to speak in this way about the biblical text exclusively is to leave out an essential feature. There will be a haunting absence.

We can say, then, that at least this is what it means to denominate a text “Scripture” - it is to claim that this text is not just like any other text, because we must make use of God-talk in order to speak adequately of it.

It comes as no surprise, then, that the Scriptures make theological claims about themselves. Consider, for instance, St. Paul’s words to Timothy in 2 Timothy 3:14-17:

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.

By “scripture” here Paul surely has in mind the texts which Timothy, like Paul, studied in the synagogue from an early age: Greek translations of the Law, Prophets, and Writings. 2 Peter makes similar assertions about St. Paul’s own letters in 2 Peter 3:14-16:

Therefore, beloved, while you are waiting for these things, strive to be found by him at peace, without spot or blemish; and regard the patience of our Lord as salvation. So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures.

Presumably “the other scriptures” refers to the same texts Paul mentions in 2 Timothy 3. But scripture, now, also includes the letters of St. Paul, which convey “the wisdom given him” - a wisdom difficult to understand.

TO BE CONTINUED