A Ramble About Speculative Theology

I've been struggling with writing this one, not because I don't know if it should be said, but because I'm not sure how to put all the pieces together to say it in a coherent fashion. Recently I posted a status update on Facebook which said this:

“There is something that I am becoming more and more convinced of. The source of our disunity within the Universal Church is speculative theology. As I was re-reading the letter of Clement of Rome to the Church at Corinth, and the letter of Ignatius of Antioch to the Ephesians recently, this seemed to be the focus of their attack. People within the church were getting too full of themselves, jealous of the established Bishop, and teaching something more than just the "simple truth of Jesus Christ." God is mystery. Salvation is mystery. It remains that way until you get to know Him personally and spend time with Him and He reveals Himself to you. But what He reveals to you, He reveals in a way that is meant primarily for you. While it may be helpful as a guide for others, it is meant primarily for you as it may be misunderstood by others. This is true theology, the study of God as He is in Himself and as He reveals Himself to you, not the speculation about Him which can arise from studying the experiences and revelations of others.”

What do I mean by “speculative theology”? I mean the kind of theology which is done by thinking about God, angels, salvation, and unseen things. The kind of theology which comes from pulling out your Bible, commentaries, spiritual writings, and dogmatic texts and trying to build an intellectual picture based on how all of these fit together. The problem is that this is how most modern Christians are taught to do theology even as a profession. We are taught to learn about God and how He works within us and within the world from these tools that we are handed. We are given a set of dogmas and told, “this is the truth!” But of course, each denomination and Church puts that truth together a little differently even if the pieces it uses come from the same sources.

The Fathers of the Church had a very different view of theology. You weren't considered a theologian until you had received a personal vision of God. In their mind, a person wasn't doing theology until He had put all the speculation aside and just spent time looking upon God Himself as He is and as He chose to reveal Himself through inward prayer. They strongly discouraged speculative theology, even if it was tracking along the right lines because the person really didn't know what he was talking about until He had the experience of God in prayer. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, this is still the view.

The writings of the early Fathers of the Church, as well as the desert Fathers, are all very instructive on this point. You don't find dissertations on soteriology. There is no debate on whether a person is justified by faith and the moment of belief or at baptism. With these Fathers, it was all about the practice of one's faith, and what someone who followed Christ looked like in their actions, and what it looked like when someone was not following Christ. They wrote about what kind of demonic attacks to expect and gave very frank and practical advice on how to counter them. They wrote about prayer, how to pray, and how to deal with distractions during prayer. When reading them, you get the impression that they really couldn't have cared less about what we now consider to be major dividing lines within the Church. They were all very practical men, and for them following Christ wasn't a theoretical exercise. It was more important than breathing.

These kinds of speculative theology didn't start getting talked about until people within the Church started rising up against their Church leaders out of jealousy. They began accusing their bishops and priests of not teaching the whole truth, or not teaching the truth correctly, and so started causing dissensions. The union of love within the churches was coming under threat because of that envy as people began seeing their version of the truth as more important than the tolerance and compassion which love demanded. And so, bishops had to respond to defend the orthodox versions of the truth rather than focus on what was really important, loving one another as Christ loved us.

When we place more importance on our own speculative versions of the truth than we do on loving one another in mutual tolerance and understanding then we are committing heresy. When we get more worked up about what someone believes as to when justification occurs, or whether or not someone can lose their salvation, or what the proper church government looks like, or who can baptize than we do about caring for the other person then we are committing heresy.

All too often I hear today that the ancient church was primitive. That they didn't really have a full grasp of the Gospel or of theological truth. The truth is that only a fool would believe that a divided Universal Church was somehow more enlightened than a united Universal Church. They understood the Gospel so well that they gave up everything for it and died defending it.

The path to restoring the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church isn't through theological gymnastics and clever philosophy. The path to restoring the unity of what was broken is through mutual love, tolerance, kindness and understanding through Jesus Christ.