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.

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.