The Need For A Personal Theology
Developing a personal theology presupposes a personal belief in God and is an attempt to understand who He is, what He does, and how He intermingles in His creation and the lives of those whom He has created.
While we can know Him personally and intimately, there will remain a distinct sense in which He will always be a mystery that our minds can't seem to grasp or understand that keeps us on our search of exploration in knowing Him. After all, how can the finite grasp and understand the Infinite? How can we, who are time and space oriented creatures, fully grasp and understand One who is timeless and omnipresent? How can that which knows and understands only in part measure and fathom that which is all knowing? Yet, our human need orients us to the necessity to cultivate a personal understanding, a personal theology, of God.
Resident Danger In Developing A Personal Theology
While understanding God from a personal perspective is both good and healthy, the mere assumption of ideas and opinions is altogether dangerous and can lead to the formation of concepts that are deluding.
Many have been the ideas and opinions of the well intentioned throughout the history of the Church. A preponderance and proliferation of religious material from Christian thinkers fills the shelves of libraries, book stores, and html files. Complicating an already complicated situation is the vast amount of New Age and New Thought resources that seem to be infiltrating the camp of Christian thought and reason. The possibility of falling prey to dogmatic philosophies and doctrines of demons is far too great to dismiss and great care should be taken in the journey of defining a personal theology.
Foundation For A Personal Theology
Though theologians will likely never resolve the crisis that exists where various doctrinal understandings have fractured and divided the Church into its many denominational flavorings, it is entirely possible to form a foundation for a personal theology that avoids the riffs and divisions that separate the Body of Christ into its assorted camps. Arriving at such a personal theology involves mining the vast field of resources that are available with an eclectic eye that sees and appreciates the inherent truth contained at the heart of the varied legitimate theological positions.
This, by no means, weakens the strength of the Gospel message. Rather, it allows for a well rounded understanding of the many threads of thought contained within the Sacred Scriptures, which are, themselves, the foundation that upholds the truth and reveals error. This approach is not one of broad ecumenicalism but one that seeks to establish the centrality of Sacred Truth in the midst of a great sea of divided opinions and religious traditions. As well, this approach causes us to establish our identity as believers in Christ Jesus himself rather than in lesser denominational flavorings and preferences and thereby increases our effectiveness as believers in the God given New Testament ministry of reconciliation to which all believers are called.
The Centrality Of The Sacred Scriptures
The Sacred Scriptures, God's Word, must abide as the source upon which we develop a personal theology. In order to avoid being deceived by philosophies, waves of doctrines, and supposed new revelations that have their source in the heart of man, we must have a decisive guide. While many in our day reject it as antiquated, this guide, historically, presently, and for all future time, has been, is, and will ever remain the Bible. Without it as the single authoritative and definitive source for the foundation of what we believe, we will find ourselves being led down paths that insure our own personal spiritual demise. Our confidence must rest solidly in God and what He has objectively said rather than the word of man which is all too often subjective to bias and preference.
Versions/Translations
At no other time in the history of the Church has there been such a quest in publishing new translations and versions of the Sacred Scriptures. Various schools of Christian thought, as well as individual ministers and ministries, have attempted to make the Bible more understandable by publishing study Bibles that include systematic studies asserting their theological positions.
The major translations of the copies of the original manuscripts have caused riffs resulting in discord and division hosted by those who insist on the authenticity and authority of one or the other of the various copies.
In the midst of this clamor, it's important to realize that there is more agreement than disagreement in these copies and the consensus found in them is more reliable than all the superstition and speculation of those, past and present, who insist that these documents of antiquity are unreliable as a source of direction. Those volumes which are indeed translations are our most reliable resources while versions that are merely paraphrased tend to reflect more of the bias of the one who is simply rewriting the translated text in his own words. Though a paraphrase may use more contemporary language to explain concepts, it is in our best interest to take advantage of the linguistic scholarship of those who worked in concert with others in rendering translations. These are numerous and readily available.
Today's students of the Sacred Text need not limit their study to the archaic, though beautiful, language found in the English translation of the 16th century. Nor should one feel intimidated by those who insist upon the supremacy of the "Authorized" Version. Equally, one should not simply throw this translation away but use it as a resource in studying Sacred Scripture. Analytical and exhaustive concordances, as well as commentaries, based on the A.V., open windows that aid in understanding the ancient Hebrew and Greek languages of the original manuscripts and copies. When utilizing the scholarship reflected in commentaries, one is well advised to study the work of writers from differing theological backgrounds.
Doctrinal Dogma
There are numerous recurrent themes found in Sacred Scripture with the single most important one being the theme of Redemption in Christ. These themes have been greatly explored and expounded upon throughout the Church Age by theologians, pastors, and Bible teachers. The Reformation, and the reformations that followed, brought opportunity for healthy differences of opinion, differences that should have served to broaden narrower understandings, but resulted in various schools of theological thought which brought with them schisms in the Body while establishing their right to decree absolute truth.
The following is a quote from the Catechism Of The Catholic Church. While this is reflective of the position of the Roman Church, it also reflects the attitude and spirit of each of the schools of theology which insists its own correctness over that of other schools.
"The Church's Magisterium exercises the authority it holds from Christ to the fullest extent when it defines dogmas, that is, when it proposes, in a form obliging the Christian people to an irrevocable adherence of faith, truths contained in divine Revelation or also when it proposes, in a definitive way, truths having a necessary connection with these. There is an organic connection between our spiritual life and the dogmas. Dogmas are lights along the path of faith; they illuminate it and make it secure. Conversely, if our life is upright, our intellect and heart will be open to welcome the light shed by the dogmas of the faith. The mutual connections between dogmas, and their coherence, can be found in the whole of the Revelation of the mystery of Christ. In Catholic doctrine there exists an order or 'hierarchy' of truths, since they vary in relation to the foundation of the Christian faith." (p. 28, #88-90)
The various schools of theological thought go to great lengths to prescribe and propagate their systematic theologies and great heated debates have taken place over the centuries as learned and sincere men argued the correctness of their interpretations. This same spirit is yet alive in our present age as some work to uphold the findings of their own historical councils while others delve into areas of heretical interpretation.
It is in this environment, one that can be a source of confusion and discouragement, that we seek to discover and know for ourselves the simple and eternal truth as contained within the pages of Sacred Scripture. It is also within this environment that one must be willing to invest their effort and time as a student researching and comparing the dogmas of the Church as held by the various schools of theological thought. This is no small undertaking, ours is a vast combined library with an exhaustive course syllabus, but one that yields a reward of great personal satisfaction combined with an even larger more unifying appreciation and perspective of this beautiful but fractured world that we call the Church.
There are some questions that all of us need to ask as we work toward developing a personal theology.
Who Said What?
Most of us are groomed to accept as truth the things being taught us by those who teach us. In many cases, in our modern day, willful and well intentioned hungry souls accept as truth the spoken word of religious leaders based upon their own declaration that what they (the leaders) communicate is a communique from God received as a direct word of revelation or from their own personal study. It's dangerous to build our lives upon the "the Lord told me or showed me" that comes from another fallible human. Equally, our blind reception of and strict adherence to the historical dogmas that define denominations also reflects a lack of judgement on our part.
In developing our own personal theology it's important that we become familiar with those sources whose interpretations and teachings of Sacred Scripture were the basis for the foundation of the dogmas that men have built institutions around. Each denomination has them. And each denomination has its scholars who have authored texts of believable systematic essays proclaiming the correctness of their doctrine using proof texts and logical arguments from Sacred Scripture.
Our great opportunity and challenge is to invest the precious energy necessary to kindly, respectfully, and habitually revisit the writings of those who heartily served the Lord with such a whole hearted zeal that their own earnestness gave birth to churches and denominations that have flourished over the centuries. In each of them, as in the examples of the saints of all ages, there's something valuable that we can learn if we will take the time to sit at their feet as eager students.
Surrounding Spiritual Climate
The Church Age, that frame of time marked at its beginning by the inception of the Church and at its conclusion by the Second Coming of Christ, has undergone numerous seasons of change brought on by the dual continual process where the spiritual climate of the Church warms and cools or where sincere believers begin questioning the authority and dogmas of the Church. The Great Reformation was born in a waning spiritual climate where perceived errors were espoused and propagated by the Roman Church. Subsequent smaller reformations gave rise to numerous schools of theological thought and now we have the seemingly unresolvable debates between Protestantism and Catholicism, Arminianism and Calvinism, Fundamentalism and Liberalism, the proponents of Pentecostalism and their opponents. Eschatology, the theories concerning the events of the Last Days, brings even more division to an already fractured Church.
In developing a personal theology its valuable to understand the spiritual climate surrounding the significant events in the history of the Church that contributed to religious movements and shifts in theological thinking. Researching the genealogy of the Church, and its movements throughout its history from antiquity to modern times, sheds an abundance of light. This light reveals both the beauty and the blemishes of the Church and goes great lengths to effectively disclose the heresies of the past and their counterparts in the present.
Unifying Or Divisional
Attacking error, more often than not, serves to increase the strength of the perceived erroneous through heightened hostility toward the one attacking. Not many enjoy being told that they are wrong. Direct confrontation, especially where religious beliefs, practices, and traditions are concerned, has an emboldening effect. Growing friendships and fellowship within the Body of Christ are too important to jeopardize over theological positions and traditions that are not heaven or hell issues.
Paramount in our quest should be the simple desire to see the Body of Christ as a unified body rather than a divided one, to be and to be used as emissaries of healing and reconciliation within a badly fractured and divided Church. Our developing personal theology should be one of such maturity that it loses its sharp edge of condemnation toward those of differing opinions.
While we are being liberated by the truth, we should not use our freedom as a whipping post for those who are yet locked behind the walls and within the corridors of divisional thinking. To do so would be to fall into the error of others by establishing and propagating our own personal theology as the standard by which all other theologies and dogmas are measured. Our own preference, correct though it may be, should not be used as an occasion to further the fracturing process that's taken place in the Church. Rather, our efforts should be invested in the slow and careful fostering of unity within the Body.
Historical Christological Positioning
We, believers in this 21st century, are faced with some tremendous opportunities and challenges as our world moves toward a fuller global environment. It would be foolish to close our eyes to the benefits and dangers inherent here. There's much that we can learn from other cultures and there's much in other cultures that can be our undoing, particularly where religious belief is concerned.
The worlds religions hold within themselves devotional qualities that should provoke us to jealousy, not of their gods, but of their practices of devotion to their gods. Equally, we should also be evoked to such a deep sense of concern and care for our faith that the religions of the world would see in our devotion and practices something that would evoke their interest.
Insuring that our personal theology is rooted solidly in a historical Christological position is as important as insuring the centrality of Sacred Scripture in our belief system. The pristine and primitive Gospel abides in a world of religions and faiths, not as one of many roads that lead to heaven, but as the only Gospel given among men by which we must be saved. Modern interpretations, whether our own or those of others, that lessen this truth are merely malignant ideas that need to be rejected.
Summary
As a result of the inherent and inherited void that lies within the fabric of our beings, and whether by conscious effort, lackadaisical happenstance, or abject denial, all of humankind is in the process of developing some type of personal theology. The product is one that varies through degrees of acceptance or rejection of truth concerning the Divine Reality himself.
Church history is replete with legitimate and acceptable theologies as well as those which are aberrations to be avoided. Theological dogmas, both the acceptable and aberrant, yield themselves as valuable and worthwhile study material. Our own successful avoidance of heretical error in the present can be greatly assisted by understanding heretical error in the past. Consciously deciding to develop a personal theology involves us in a tremendously large course of self-education focused in the Sacred Scriptures and around the genealogical history of the developing Church and its subsequent multi-flavored doctrines.
In the formalization of a personal theology, it is perfectly acceptable to lean toward a particular historical position. There is nothing unoriginal about a personal theology that accepts something which has already been formalized. An eclectic position, one that sees the beauty in each of the historical theologies, does not imply heresy on the part of the formulator. However, to assume a position that is obviously outside the boundaries created by the established historical theologies of the Church would be an exercise in poor interpretation and judgement.
The critical issue resting at the center of our personal theology, and spilling out to fill its circumference, is the unity or disunity that it fosters within the Body of Christ. Perfect agreement in theological opinions does not have to be accomplished. The manifestation of a perfect unity, in spite of differences of theological opinion, a unity that is a reflection of the oneness of the Body of Christ, needs to become a present reality.
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