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.
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| 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.)
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| 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.
