Thursday, May 22, 2025

Rambling Thoughts About The State Of Theology

 I'm not entirely certain how to word what I'm thinking here, but I'm going to give it a go anyway.
     Theology, and in particular Christian theology, tends to be stuck in the past, and not in a good way. It boxes itself in with terms like Penal Substitutionary Atonement, Christus Victor, Trinitarianism, Arianism, Dualism, Gnosticism, Creationism, and several dozen other such terms born from medieval, renaissance, and pre-modern theological and philosophical works. These terms become shorthand for either orthodox or heterodox doctrinal statements depending on which side of them you might come down. Nearly all of the lenses through which the Scriptures or any interpretations of them are seen are built off of pre-industrial worldviews which no other science or field of knowledge uses any more. The irony here is that the most ancient texts of all, and the most ancient worldviews in which Christianity in particular was born and formed are totally ignored or explained away for anachronism. God forbid modern science and discoveries should have anything to contribute to the conversation.
     From my experience, the words of Yoda are never more true that, "You must unlearn what you have learned." The Scripture says that the word of God is living and active. There is a dynamism implied and even directly stated here. Our understanding of both general and special revelation and how one interprets and complements the other has to grow and evolve dynamically as our understanding of either grows and evolves dynamically with new information and evidence. That's how a science works. You make an observation, develop a hypothesis, test the hypothesis against observed reality, and then refine the hypothesis or develop a new one to explain the results and do it all over again.
     Theology used to be known as the queen of sciences and held in high esteem as such in universities. Now it's been ejected from the science departments of every university precisely because its practitioners refuse to accept new information which conflicts with their old hypotheses. They are like the old physicists who used to discourage people from entering the field because they thought there was nothing left to discover because of Newton. But then came Einstein. But then came Max Planck. Special Relativity and Quantum Mechanics opened up completely new fields of study in physics, and we rely on their predictions for our modern technology, like cell phones for example, every day. The same is true of physicians who relied on Galen's medical texts for more than a thousand years and refused to accept any challenge to this brilliant man's canon until Galen was proven wrong by William Harvey's observations and new hypothesis of blood circulation. The Church's condemnation of Galileo is well documented, as is now the fact that the Earth and all the other planets revolve around the sun, and not vice versa.
     What amazes and dumbfounds me about all of this is that when these outdated interpretations are demonstrated to be lacking, it is treated as if the Scriptures themselves are being attacked as though the interpretation was just as sacred, just as God-breathed as the Scriptures themselves. People will literally refuse to accept what is right in front of their eyes. And why? Because it's "safe". It may be in error, but it's "safe". The interpretations and ideas about God themselves become sacred cows, idols to be adored and worshiped and protected at all cost, even the cost of being blind to the real, living God who actually is.
     Honestly, I'm getting to the point, or may have passed it a long, long time ago, where I just don't care anymore about the old theological categories and labels. The neat little boxes in which ideas can safely be placed in order to accept or more often reject them. Reality isn't neat. It's not safe. Neither is God where our worldviews are concerned. And there's a huge difference between holding beliefs and opinions about God and knowing Him, interacting with Him, and getting to know Him. There's a huge difference between theorizing about God and knowing Him by observation. You'd be surprised by how often the word in Greek, epignosis, "knowledge by observation," and its cognates are used in the New Testament when it comes to God and spiritual things, and how often this is encouraged and prayed for.
     Genuine theology, the study of God, doesn't exist in ancient tomes, terminology, and ideas. It exists by doing it. It exists by observation, hypothesis, and then testing that hypothesis against observed reality. We need to move on.

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