Critical Thinking at Work in Theology

In my last blog I posited the notion that critical thinking is not the enemy of Christianity, including a robust, confessional version thereof. In fact, a sound form of Christianity actually requires its adherents to employ critical thinking and to grow in it. To paraphrase Socrates, an unexamined faith is unworthy of believing. Thus, critical thinking is not in and of itself an enemy of serious, orthodox Christianity. The real danger is the half-hearted attempt at critical thinking known as cynical thinking. Four centuries ago this truth was acknowledged by Francis Bacon: “It is true, that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.”

Before we explore this topic further, let me remind the reader that to engage in critical thinking does not mean that one rejects out of hand what one is studying. Literary critics engage a particular work not because they think it is meaningless but because they believe that it has something to teach us about the human condition and they want to understand better what it is saying. When historians investigate particular battles or events, they usually do not believe that these events never took place and that all previous histories are all bunkum. Rather, they take for granted that these things did occur, but they want to understand them in greater detail and perhaps clear up some confusion. Critical thinking is not just negative thinking about everything, but an attempt to look at a particular matter in great detail and ask important questions of it.

Medieval monasteries not only copied the Scriptures
but promoted literacy and learning in general.

Of course, part of critical thinking does involve examining whether one’s first principles are reliable and true. Thus, a Christian will have to ask why he or she embraces Christianity. No one re-examines their first principles every day or should be expected to, but it is still something that ought to be done from time to time—and Christians should examine why they believe what they do. In addition to confirming the basis for their faith, it also prepares them to explain it to those who want to know more about it. I will not lay out the arguments for Christianity in this post, but urge the reader to consult any number of works that have made the case. Some arguments are philosophical (such as the various proofs for God or the explanations for the Christian understanding of good and evil). Other arguments are grounded in history, such as the case for Christ’s resurrection. But Christians for centuries have made the point again and again: the Christian faith is not contrary to reason and in fact is the most rational of all possible philosophies, ideologies, and religions; moreover, it is supported by the evidence of history, as much as anything else is.

The objection is often raised—by Christians and non-Christians alike—that Christianity is accepted by faith, not by rational argument. That statement, however, misunderstands what faith is. Faith is not an irrational leap into the unknown. We do not believe in something simply because it is absurd or because we wish that it would be true, even though all evidence points against it. Instead, a person believes what he or she deems most likely to be true. Every human being is in the awkward position of being unable to know anything (especially on the most important of subjects) with absolute certainty. As a consequence, every human being has to put his or her trust in someone or something. We do it in small ways and in big ways. We may trust that the person who is giving us directions indeed knows the area and isn’t trying to fool us. We trust that the bank teller will actually deposit the money instead of absconding with it. We may be wrong or we may be deceived, but we would not trust a person whom we believe to be deceitful. Similarly, when it comes to the big questions in life, we look at the evidence and choose what seems most reasonable. Thus, Christians believe in Christ not because it seems foolish to do so, but because it seems the most sensible thing to do.

To be sure, we Christians will at the same time acknowledge that faith in Christ is a gift from God, but we do not thereby imply that the Christian faith is irrational. Instead, we acknowledge that human beings often choose irrationally and that we need help so that we do not blind ourselves to reality. Consider the fact that many people have an irrational fear of flying, even though it is by far safer to fly than to drive. By the same token, we would tend stubbornly to deny the truth of the Christian faith because of our innate selfishness, but God persuades us of the truth. He does so not by overcoming our rationality, but our irrationality.

But once a person has examined the first principles of the Christian faith and found them to be eminently acceptable, the need for critical thought has not come to an end. If anything, it grows. The Christian faith has often been reduced to platitudes, but when it has, it has become unconvincing. Indeed, one thing that I find consistently among critics of Christianity is that they have reduced its content to mere slogans (often wildly inaccurate ones at that), which they then handily dismiss. The Christian truth consists of many teachings that are at their heart paradoxical: God is one divine being, yet there are three distinct Persons in the Godhead; Jesus Christ is fully divine and fully human, in two distinct natures but consisting of only one person; we are not saved by our good works but by trusting in Christ, and yet good works must be done; the Kingdom of God is in our midst, and it has not yet come; we are new creations in Christ, and we bear within ourselves the old sinful nature of Adam. When people err, they usually do not deny Christian teaching altogether, but they usually fail to make distinctions within a paradox, or they hold to one side of the paradox and not the other, or they fail to understand which side of the paradox needs to be upheld in a particular context. For example, rarely if ever have Christians believed in a multitude of gods (polytheism), but they have fallen into one or more errors in relating the unity of the Godhead to the distinction between three Persons by sacrificing one or the other. Most of Christian theology, therefore, is making appropriate distinctions, both when examining the Scriptures and when applying them to life.

The Scriptures need to be understood, and they can only be understood if people are willing to do the hard linguistic, grammatical, rhetorical, and historical study. Often a word can have more than one meaning, and the attentive reader has to consider which is the more likely meaning in a particular passage. Sometimes the evidence can be marshaled for more than one explanation, and the decision is not easy. The exegete has to weigh the evidence rather than mechanically count it. The serious exegete also realizes that dictionaries and other scholarly resources may err since they are compiled by fallible individuals. Then there are those passages and words that are unclear or whose nuances are lost on us because we do not have a full grasp of the historical situation or of a word’s historical usage. Consider, for example, how the Greek word for “It is finished” was understood for centuries—not altogether wrongly—as meaning, “It is over,” while records of account balances written in antiquity on papyrus and discovered a century ago allowed us to see that it can also mean, “[Balance of a debt] has been paid in full,” thus adding a theological nuance hitherto unnoticed. Thus, even if one happens to believe that the Scriptures teach the gospel truth and are reliable, as I do, it doesn’t mean that the interpreter is infallible or knows everything about the Bible or a particular passage.

Nathan confronts David. The words non moechaberis
are Latin for "You shall not commit adultery."

But a theologian—and in some sense every Christian is a theologian inasmuch as all Christians think about the Scriptures and divine matters—must also know how to apply the truths of Scripture. And that is also no easy matter. We see how difficult it is when we consider the way that the prophet Nathan treated David, as recorded in 2 Samuel 12. Within a couple minutes of Nathan telling David, “You are the man [who deserves to die]!” Nathan told David, “The LORD also has put away your sin; you shall not die.” Unless one understands David’s two different states of mind, it will seem rather bizarre to see David condemned to death one moment and then spared the next. The law had to be spoken in its severity to David when he refused to acknowledge his sin; nothing short of death could have woken him from his spiritual slumber. But because God does not desire the death of sinners, He also forgave David and told Nathan to proclaim absolution. Recognizing this distinction of law and gospel—and the situations that call for each—requires critical thinking. Even if one recognizes that the law has to be preached in its severity to admonish unrepentant sinners while the gospel has to be preached in its sweetness to comfort repentant sinners, one still has to determine whether he is dealing with an unrepentant or repentant sinner, and that task cannot be done thoughtlessly.

Every Christian knows that God expects His people to engage in spiritual worship by presenting their “bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rom 12:1). What people often forget is that part of this spiritual worship involves our being “transformed by the renewal of [our] mind” and “discern[ing] what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom 12:2). That calls for critical thinking with all one’s power—and then some.

Critical Thinking, Cynical Thinking, and Theology

I enjoy blogging, but often do not have the time to do it as often as I should. I’ve had the following essay running around my head for some time, but am only now getting around to putting ink to paper—or keystroke to pixel.

If you ask most people, they would tell you that critical thinking and theology (or religion in general) are mortal enemies. Religious people cannot think critically, it is assumed, especially if they happen to hold to the old creeds. And if one does think critically, it is assumed that no particular religion or dogma will be held dear. But that is because most people have assumed that critical thinking is the same as cynical thinking, which it is not.

There is no lack of cynical thinking nowadays. Name an author from a bygone era, and an educated smart-aleck will tell you that so-and-so held to a particular bigotry or engaged in some delicious vice that was disapproved then but is in favor now. (The sexual indulgences of every literary fop and of every monarch are well known; what they actually did outside of the boudoir, less so.) The point of this knowledge is clear. We learn about their prejudices so that we can congratulate ourselves for being enlightened people who never succumbed to the sort of thinking popular in those dark eras. We learn about the sexual escapades of prominent people in history so that we can herald them for being forerunners of a modern society that has rid itself of all prudery. We take a cynical view on history and life in general largely so that we do not have to think critically about ourselves and our own generation.

Auguste Rodin, Le Penseur

For that reason, most of today’s cynical thinking does not involve critical thinking. Shakespeare is either lauded because he was gay or denounced because he was an anti-Semite. If you ask people why they say those things about Shakespeare, they will roll their eyes. How dense can you be? Didn’t you hear the teacher give that factoid about Shakespeare? But usually the people who toss out such little tidbits of literary gossip cannot defend their statements. Of course, they haven’t read The Merchant of Venice, and even if they had, they wouldn’t know how to evaluate it. It would never occur to them that literature (and especially drama) can be notoriously ambiguous and that the attitudes of its characters—even its principal ones—do not necessarily reflect the author’s beliefs, or else we would have to argue that Shakespeare approved of regicide and parricide because of his Macbeth and Hamlet. Of course, this does not in itself exonerate Shakespeare of the charge of anti-Semitism, but the evidence has to be weighed and evaluated more carefully and in a more nuanced manner than is done by those who merely parrot the charge.

Unthinking cynicism is nothing new, and neither is unthinking cynicism passing itself off as critical thought. By all accounts, Socrates (d. 399 B.C.) was truly concerned to find the meaning of justice, goodness, courage, beauty, and the like. He engaged in critical thinking, asking whether the traditional answers given matched the evidence. He poked and prodded to find out exactly what people meant by what they were saying. But Socrates was not cynical in undertaking this process. He believed that there were answers to these questions, even if those answers were not always clear to him. His student Plato would agree and further develop the notion of Ideas or Forms. He would grant, as he did in his dialogue Parmenides, that there are difficulties with that particular notion, but he would not abandon that thought altogether.

But while Socrates and Plato were engaged in serious critical thought, there were plenty of contemporaries who substituted mere cynicism for critical thought. These were the youth whom Socrates was accused of corrupting, but who in truth loved sophistry and clever argument and were unconcerned about finding the truth. Plato recognized the difference and he alludes to it in many of his dialogues. In The Symposium, for example, he outlines (through the character Socrates) an ascent to beauty that requires a philosopher to look beyond physical beauty and to discern the beauty of ideas, laws, and (ultimately) Beauty Itself. It is absolutely difficult work and requires the discipline of an ascetic. But while Plato commends Socrates’ vision of philosophy, he has the dialogue narrated by unreliable narrators as a word of warning to the reader to take Socrates’ method seriously rather than merely to ape his shoeless style. Apollodorus, the dialogue’s chief narrator, wasn’t present and knows the tale only third-hand. He relies mainly on Aristodemus, who was present but didn’t have the wherewithal to compose his own speech and who had turned Socratic philosophy into mere argumentativeness. With such narrators garbling the story, it is no wonder that Aristophanes dismissed Socrates as a sophist and a crank in his comedy The Clouds. Plato begs to differ, however, and urges us to see the difference between cynicism and real critical thought.

While cynicism has passed itself off as critical thought for a long time, it has become more prevalent recently. The reigning philosophies of the past three centuries have grown rather skeptical about what we can know. Even those that believed in the value of the empirical sciences have tended to dismiss talk about aesthetics, ethics, religion, and ontology as nonsense. With the advent of Postmodernism, the trustworthiness of even empirical science has been questioned. At the same time, modern society has heralded the unshackling of the individual from mediating institutions (such as the family, the community, and the church), even as the individual has actually become quite beholden to corporations and to the nation-state in a way undreamed of in pre-modern societies. It is in the interest of the powers-that-be to have individuals turned into uncritical cynics, who are too cynical to think that anything can be done to right any wrongs and too uncritical to bother to find a way or even to discern that wrongs are being committed.

Not all cynical thinkers are uncritical thinkers, but cynicism can easily take the place of robust critical thinking. And this has often happened as people evaluate Christianity. Christianity is well grounded in history if one cares to look at the evidence. It offers a rigorous intellectual life for those who would follow it. Christian theology does not consist of mere platitudes (although some have tried to reduce it to them), but its dogmas are rich in nuance and require an intellectual regimen to be apprehended correctly. But too often people dismiss Christianity cynically. They “know” that Jesus never lived or that He never said anything ascribed to Him. It isn’t that they have weighed the evidence and found it wanting, but rather they have dismissed it prematurely.

Take, for example, the Jesus Seminar, which has taken the cynicism of the historical-critical method to its absurd but logical conclusion. As Korey Maas points out in a recent article in Logia, the methodology of the Jesus Seminar is anything but grounded in the methods of sound historical investigation. It purports to find the “real Jesus” by ruling out any saying of His that sounded like what a first century Jew or an early Christian might say. As Maas notes, this is not standard operating procedure for evaluating other historical figures, and he illustrates his point by using the example of George Washington. Imagine that historians had to rule out as apocryphal anything ascribed to him that sounded like (1) what someone in the mid-eighteenth century British Empire would have said or (2) what an American in the early years of independence might have said. One would expect that Washington would talk in part like an eighteenth century British subject and in part like a newly independent American. Why, therefore, would we want to rule out the possibility that Jesus, who was raised as a pious Jew, would say things that other first century AD Jews would say, and that, as the founder of Christianity, He would also talk like His Christian followers would?

It isn’t critical thinking that is the enemy of Christianity (including a confessionally robust version of it such as I embrace). It is a cynicism that has deluded itself into thinking that it is critical thought. In my next post I’ll explore how Christians ought to employ critical thinking in theology.

From my article on the Athanasian Creed (which will appear in a companion to the Lutheran Service Book)

Since Trinity Sunday is fast approaching, I thought I would post a portion of an article I had written introducing the Athanasian Creed. There was much that I learned in researching this topic that I had not been taught in the seminary. One thing that I didn't include in my article: this creed is a masterpiece of Latin prose, as can be seen in the way that it consistently follows the rigid metrical rules for ending clauses in Ciceronian era prose while it also still conforms to the dictates of contemporary 5th century prose, whose cadences were based on accentuation rather than syllable quantity. That in itself was a remarkable feat. If you want to read more, you'll have to buy the book.

Once a year, need it or not, cowboys would take a bath—or so the legend goes. And once a year, need it or not, Lutheran congregations are forced to recite the Athanasian Creed. Those who find the annual recitation on Trinity Sunday to be a burdensome chore might well consider that from the days of Charlemagne the Athanasian Creed was to be learned by heart by the clergy and recited at Prime every Sunday. That was not enough for the Cluniac monks, who sang it daily.[1] Only at the dawn of the twentieth century did it get reduced in Roman circles from Prime on every Sunday to Prime on the Sundays after the Epiphany and Pentecost. By the middle of the same century it had been further reduced to Prime on Trinity Sunday only.[2] Anglican usage showed a similar deterioration of use, although it has been waning in those circles for the past two centuries.[3]

Prime, of course, was one of the daily offices sung first by monks and later by all clergy. As one of the more minor offices, it was less likely to be attended by laity than Matins or Compline. Thus, through most of the centuries of its use, the Athanasian Creed has been something pastors confessed repeatedly in their devotional life so that it could shape their preaching, while lay people have not used it as much. History would suggest, therefore, that we should not expect the Athanasian Creed to be an integral part of the average lay person’s thinking or devotional life. A wiser practice would be to encourage pastors (and perhaps elders and commissioned ministers of religion) to recite the Athanasian Creed more frequently than once a year (perhaps weekly) while expecting lay people to make use primarily of the Apostles’ Creed in their daily devotions (as Luther suggests) and the Nicene Creed at the Sunday Divine Service. By praying the Athanasian Creed, pastors would imbibe its rich Trinitarian and Christological language, which would help shape their preaching. This practice would not abolish the annual recitation of the Athanasian Creed on Trinity Sunday, but it might be a better way to steep pastors in the creed’s rich doctrine of the Trinity and enable them to communicate its theology to the laity they shepherd.

Who wrote the Athanasian Creed? Certainly not Athanasius, as it is never referred to by him or his contemporaries or even any later person in the Greek-speaking church, at least not until centuries later. Those who read Latin will recognize instantly that it is too Latinate in its phraseology and structure to be a translation of a Greek original. There are clear verbal parallels between the creed and the writings of Ambrose of Milan (†397), Augustine of Hippo (†430), Fulgentius of Ruspe (†533), and theologians of southern France such as Vincent of Lérins († ca. 450), Faustus of Riez († ca. 490), and Caesarius of Arles (†542).[4] But verbal parallelism is not in and of itself determinative. These theologians may have borrowed language from the creed, or the creed may have borrowed language from the theologians, or the creed may have been written by one of them.

When G. Friedrich Bente wrote his historical introduction to the Athanasian Creed as part of the Concordia Triglotta, he could do no more than suggest its origin in southern France between 450 and 600, which was as far as the scholarly consensus at that time was willing to go.[5] It was recognized by then that the Trinitarian language is drawn from that of Augustine’s treatise on the Trinity, although the creed seems to reflect Augustinianism rather than the hand of Augustine himself.[6] The focus of the creed is largely anti-Arian, but directed at a more moderate form of Arianism than the original Arianism, which would indicate that it was directed more against the Goths, such as had settled in Spain and France. Given the many parallels between the creed and theologians of southern France, that provenance seems more likely.

However, in 1931 the eminent French-Belgian patristic scholar Germain Morin discovered a collection of sermons of Caesarius of Arles that included the Athanasian Creed. This proved that not only had Caesarius been familiar with the creed, but that he had promoted it as well and thus the creed must have been written before his death in 542.[7] It is an intriguing possibility that Caesarius himself may have been the author, but it is unlikely, given some stylistic and minor theological differences between Caesarius and the creed. J.N.D. Kelly argues for the following: “the connexion [sic] of the creed with the monastery at Lérins, its dependence on the theology of Augustine, and, in the Trinitarian section, on his characteristic method of arguing, its much more direct and large-scale indebtedness to Vincent [of Lérins], its acquaintance with and critical attitude towards Nestorianism, and its emergence at some time between 440 and the high noon of Caesarius’ activity.”[8]

Two objections are commonly raised against the Athanasian Creed. The first is its damnatory clauses. Liberal Protestantism, Pietism, and even much of Evangelicalism have objected to the notion that a person could be condemned for failing to uphold certain dogmas.[9] Thus, Samuel Schmucker proposed dropping the Athanasian Creed when he offered his American Platform for amending the Augsburg Confession.[10] Most serious Lutherans, though, will recognize that the Scriptures themselves condemn those who teach contrary to the gospel (Galatians 1:8).[11] The second objection is that it teaches a salvation by works. But this objection does not hold up under scrutiny. The language is biblical (John 5:29) and does not contradict the notion that we are saved by faith in Christ apart from our works. It is only by faith in Christ that anyone can do good works. On the Last Day, Christ will point to our good works to demonstrate that we had true faith, while he will point out the lack of good works to demonstrate that the unbelievers had no faith (Matthew 25:31-46). Moreover, this creed was promoted by Caesarius of Arles, who was a firm opponent not only of Pelagianism (overt works-righteousness) but also semi-Pelagianism and organized the Synod of Orange in 529 to condemn it; nonetheless, he saw no false doctrine in the creed on this topic but rather promoted it instead, as we have seen.

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[1] John Norman Davidson Kelly, The Athanasian Creed (Evanston: Harper & Row Publishers, 1964), 43; Robert L. Wilken, “Introducing the Athanasian Creed,” Currents in Theology and Mission 6:1 (1979), 5-6.

[2] Kelly, 49.

[3] Kelly, 7, 49-51; Jaroslav Pelikan, Credo: Historical and Theological Guide to Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition [hereafter Pelikan, Credo] (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003), 324.

[4] Kelly, 24-34.

[5] Concordia Triglotta [hereafter Triglotta] (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 1921), 14.

[6] Pelikan, Credo, 435-436.

[7] Germain Morin, “L’Origine du symbole d’Athanase: témoignage inédit de s. Césaire d’Arles,” Revue Bénédictine 14 (1932): 207-219; cf. Kelly, 35-37.

[8] Kelly, 123.

[9] Pelikan, Credo, 488-497.

[10] Pelikan, Credo, 324-325.

[11] Pelikan (Credo, 76-78) rightly notes that pharmacists have to follow prescriptions faithfully to a doctor’s intent or else be barred from their profession; the damnatory clauses in the creed serve a similar function for theologians. Wilken, 9, also points out the need for a church still struggling with a pagan environment to delineate sharply between the God Christians worship and the pagan concepts of deity.

Is Philosophy Necessary in Theology?

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine (Jack Kilcrease) posted a blog in which he argued that people need to be familiar with Aristotelian philosophy if they are going to understand the arguments of theologians from the period of Lutheran Orthodoxy (latter half of the sixteenth century through the end of the seventeenth century), especially from the time period of John Gerhard (1582-1637) onwards, since all academic endeavors in that era were influenced by the Aristotelian Renaissance. Kilcrease’s argument makes sense, since one must understand the language in which something is written. This is doubly the case when there are precise, technical definitions given to certain words that might be used in a looser, non-technical sense in common parlance today or even in a technical sense that is somewhat different today.

Jacques-Louis David, The Death of Socrates

But there is another question that Kilcrease did not explicitly address, although I do not believe that he will differ with the answer I give below. The question is this: does one need to use philosophy or philosophical terminology in theology at all? Granted, one must understand philosophy in order to understand the theological arguments of such ancient thinkers as Gerhard or Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), but do we have to know philosophy in order to do theology today? Should we not just acknowledge that these old theologians have added an unnecessary layer of difficulty to the theological task and that we should be concerned simply with the (non-philosophical) thoughts of the Bible? As one of my Roman Catholic friends has put it, do I need to know Aristotle in order to know Jesus?

When put that way, the only pious answer—indeed the only correct answer—seems to be “No.” Christian theology must be based on the Scriptures and their teachings. They must be grounded in the person and work of Jesus, who was not a Greek philosopher or worked in their categories, but who thought and taught in a Hebrew way that is at times quite foreign to us as well as to the ancient Greek philosophers. We must be careful that we do not adopt a philosophical framework outside of the Scriptures or that taught by our Lord and then try to pigeonhole our Lord’s words into that framework. In other words, theology cannot be placed upon the Procrustean bed of philosophy, ancient or modern.

But how have Lutherans expressed this truth in the past several centuries, yes, even down to the present day? We have said that the gospel is the material principle of theology and the Scriptures are the formal principle of theology—and that philosophy is neither its material nor its formal principle. But, of course, we are using two philosophical phrases that derive ultimately from the works of Aristotle. Thus, even as we deny that philosophy is a governing principle of theology, we use philosophical terms to do so and we use those terms to distinguish two principles that govern theology. (I will omit in this discussion that God is the efficient principle of theology and that the glory of God, knowledge of divine truth, and mankind’s salvation are its final principles, as Gerhard argues.)

Gottfried Eichler, The Last Supper

But why should we distinguish between the Scriptures and the gospel as two different principles in theology? Why should we adopt this language at all? Consider these questions. Is the Scripture important, in fact indispensable, in doing theology? Is the gospel likewise important, in fact indispensable, in doing theology? Well, which is it? Is the Scripture or the gospel of vital importance, the source of all Christian thinking? A genuine Christian who is very knowledgeable about the faith should say, “Both are important, but each plays a different role. The gospel (and by that I mean especially our justification by grace through faith in Christ) is what Christian theology is about. Everything we teach is either predicated upon this fact or leads us to understand this truth. To deny the gospel or to obscure it would be to ruin Christian theology. At the same time, this gospel is not some nebulous idea. It has taken body in the words of the Scriptures—yes, with all their genealogies, historical narratives, letters to ornery churches, and other quirks. You can’t abstract the idea of the gospel apart from the Scriptures without theology going off the rails.”

In short, we are acknowledging that the gospel and the Scriptures play a foundational role in theology, but in different ways. And here it is useful to have some kind of terminology that distinguishes between the various kinds of foundational roles that something might have. To find those terms we look around to grammarians, wordsmiths, or anyone who thinks deeply about these matters. And these people say that there is no reason to reinvent the wheel. About twenty-four centuries ago, a Greek philosopher named Aristotle started asking, “When we say that something is the cause or foundation or source of something”—he would have used the word arche for all three ideas—“what are the possible meanings of that term and how can we distinguish between the various nuances?” He coined several terms that would be refined over the centuries; this allowed people to distinguish (among other things) between a material cause (or principle as it came to be called via the Latin) and a formal cause. Thus, a table has a certain shape given to it because a particular pattern (formal cause) was imposed upon its material, the wood from a tree (material cause). If asked, one could rightly say that a particular piece of furniture was a table or a wooden object, but one wouldn’t make the error of saying that it had the shape of a wooden object or that it was made out of a table.

Since this terminology has been found useful for a long time, we do not feel any need to invent new terms. You could say that the philosophers have done theology a service by being careful linguists and asking what we mean by “cause” or “principle.” It helps us to be more precise than we otherwise would be. And this precision is necessary. When people make the gospel into the formal cause of theology (whether they use that term or not), theology becomes an abstract idea divorced from the real flesh-and-blood history of Christ, Israel, and the apostles. When people make the Bible into the material principle of theology (again, whether or not they use that particular terminology), theology becomes legalistic or moralizing as people overlook what the Scriptures are really all about. And thus it is helpful to acknowledge both the gospel and the Scriptures as foundational principles for theology, but in different senses.

This terminology, I must point out, is not sacrosanct. If we were convinced that it did not adequately express the truth, we would have to invent new terminology that could. The history of Christian theology is full of people doing just that—either inventing new words or tweaking the meaning of old ones and pressing them into the service of Christian doctrine. For example, Christians took over the older philosophical terms essence (ousia) and substrate (hypostasis) and gave them somewhat different definitions, even as they coined new words such as Trinity (Trinitas)—all to explain the relationship of the three divine Persons in one divine Being. They didn’t necessarily take the philosophical language of the day and make Scripture conform to it, but they looked about to see if there was something they could borrow or adapt for their own purposes to make their point clear. And that remains a major task of theology: to make divine revelation clear and precise so that there will be no confusion or as little as possible.