Tuesday, December 13, 2022

The Nature of Theological Engagement

 

I am eternally grateful to my Systematic Theology Professor Dr. Adrio Konig for instilling in me as a student a healthy approach to theological engagement. He had deliberately populated his department with a wide range of different theologians: There was Simon Maimela, a liberation theologian, Len Hulley, a Methodist, Brian Gaybba, a Catholic, A Pentecostal whose name I forget and Konig himself who was Dutch Reformed. Konig’s approach was as follows.

·       Make sure you listen carefully to what each theologian says.

·       Make sure you understand how and why he or she has arrived at their position.

·       Don’t simply sign up to one or other position but establish your own position.

·       Make sure that you can give a well-reasoned account of this position.                                                                                                                                       

I found this approach quite liberating. I remember writing an assignment for Dr. Gaybba and receiving a good mark although I was pretty certain that he didn’t share the position I was advocating. He simply recognised that I had tried hard to build a rational case for this position from Scripture. (I sent greetings and an expression of gratitude through a mutual friend in Grahamstown to Dr. Gaybba last year shortly before he died.)

John Wesley also gives us a good example to follow. With amazing humility considering what an apostolic giant he is on the landscape of church history, he writes in the preface to his Forty Four Sermons.

Are you persuaded you see more clearly than me? It is not unlikely you may. Then treat me as you would desire to be treated yourself upon a change of circumstances. Point me out a better way than I have known. Show me it is so by plain proof of Scripture. And if I linger in the path I have been accustomed to tread, and am therefore unwilling to leave it, labour with me a little, take me by the hand, and lead me as I am able to bear. But be not displeased if I entreat you not to beat me down in order to quicken my pace. I can go but feebly and slowly at best; then I should not be able to go at all. May I request you further not to give me hard names in order to bring me into the right way? Suppose I were ever so much in the wrong, I doubt this would set me right. Rather this would make me run so much the farther from you and so get more and more out of the way.

 

The challenge is to hold firmly to one’s convictions, (for faith is the certainty of things hoped for but not seen) while maintaining a teachable spirit. How marvelously Wesley models this. 

One of my “Fathers in the Faith” was the late Ian Thompson. A theologian of considerable stature, he held office at different times as Principal of FEDSEM and Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in South Africa. Yet he was one of the most humble and saintly men I have ever had the privilege to meet. Conversing with Ian especially on theological matters he was always gentle and concerned to understand what a person was saying. Rock steady in his convictions yet without trace of the judgmental. I recall his saying to me on one occasion, “Peter our conversation must be always gracious yet seasoned with salt.”

Well, I’m still trying to get that right.

I confess to a certain admiration for Martin Luther as he debates with his ecclesiastic adversaries in the Market Square of a German town, using the earthiest of language. The apostle Paul too, was not above using earthy language when he wished to make an important point: Of the circumcision party he says, “I wish those who unsettle you would emasculate themselves.” And, “…Christ Jesus for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do count them but dung, that I might win Christ…”(KJV)

The fact is that at times this imperishable Gospel which we are called upon to proclaim from the rooftops, must be defended and contended for robustly.

Theological engagement may be robust so long as it is respectful.

I am disappointed when in a theological discussion a person adopts an ad hominum approach and begins to catalogue my shortcomings. This is unhelpful. I am able to produce a far more comprehensive catalogue of my sins than may be apparent to him or her.

In any theological engagement, it is important to play the ball and not the player.

It is especially important to avoid the ‘hard names’ that Wesley refers to.

Affixing a person with a pejorative label is no substitute for dealing with the issue. 

So then, why not play it safe and avoid theological engagement? 

The thing is none of us has the monopoly on truth.

None of us is yet fully mature in Christ.

We have yet to attain to “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Eph 4.13)

And this involves doctrinal soundness and stability, “so that we may no longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine…” (Eph 4. 14)

Yes we have the elementary doctrine of Christ in place, the stuff of the Nicene Creed, we know that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus, not of ourselves it is a gift of God, but we must go on to maturity (Heb 6.1 ; Eph 2.8)

The fact is that we need to be “filled-out” by other believers. Each of us comes from a different context and has traveled a unique journey with Jesus, and so together we are able to pool our testimonies and perspectives, to enrich one another and so approach to a fuller understanding of Him. That is why Scripture says, “..speaking the truth in love we are to grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ……when each part is working properly the body grows so that it builds itself up in love.” Eph 4. 16 

This involves respectful, truth-seeking, theological engagement. 

Peter Frow

September ‘22  

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