Doing Theology…From the Bible

I don’t buy infant baptism because it crosses a line I cannot cross as a theologian. In my personal experience, the debate (as well as countless others, such as imputation, covenant theology, etc.) revolves around how far one is willing to get away from the text of Scripture and into the realm of man-made formulations, organizations, and handy systematizations. In my evaluation, it simply doesn’t make the grade.

What am I talking about?

Some thinkers are willing to go quite far when it comes to “moving beyond the Bible to theology,” such as Hyper-Dispensationalists. Hyper-Dispys not only hold to the artificial categories of Dispensationalism (the 7 dispensations), but go so far in dividing up redemptive history so as to say that there are “two gospels” in the New Testament: the gospel of Jesus (in the Dispensation of “Kingdom”) and the gospel of Paul (in the Dispensation of “Grace”). This is obviously a short-cut in hermeneutics. If we just simply buy into the system, life is easy. How do we know what parts of the Bible apply to today’s Christians (if such a question is even fully valid to begin with)? Hyper-Dispensationalists can answer that with “only Paul’s epistles, for we live in the same dispensation of grace. Only Paul is the ‘Apostle of grace.’ ” Convenient, indeed.

But quite wrong. Of course, demonstrating the falsity of heresy is no easy task. One can’t just point to a text in Scripture and say “OK, this theology is a mistake.” There is baggage already penetrating the text from every possible angle. But the primary point I want to make, is that there is a certain degree of proximity involved in theological formulation. The best theology is that which is most closely pronounced by the direct teaching of Scripture. That is (for example), the explicit assertions in the context of teaching-text (“propositional” or “prose”) have far more authority and power in theology than (seemingly, because of my sinful nature) unclear, indirect, implicit ideas that are not even intended for teaching the concept we are trying to understand.

Our theology is our understanding of what God is teaching in His Word and doing in His world. It may be right, it may be wrong. It may be weak, it may be strong. It might even inspire someone to become a Christian.

But that only happens when our theology is God’s theology, and God’s theology is revealed in His Word. That means, the closer we are to what God is asserting in His word, the closer we are to the best information, truth, and wisdom that the universe (rather, the Creator) has to offer. The right theology is the theology that is most closely represented in the assertions of Sacred Scripture – in it’s immediate context, in it’s historical context, and in it’s canonical context.

Understanding on our part, however, is not a neutral process of organizing facts. Nor is doing theology a discipline that involves little wisdom. Without proper and right insight, theology becomes heavy, abstract, loaded, thick, and impenetrable. The knowledge of God soon evolves into the speculation of God. Our evangelist proclamation of “This is what God says, and I’m willing to die for it,” morphs into “This is what I think this book says, but don’t quote me.” Our “this is the truth” voice turns into “this may be the truth” retreat. Eventually, we end up with doctrines so far removed from the text that, while they seemed worth arguing for at first, they are no longer desirable or worthy to even embrace.

What determines our stance? Simply, it’s how close our contextualized theology is to the teaching of Scripture. Thus, there are degrees and depths of theological formulation. And Christians disagree – in virtually all camps – as to how far they are willing to go when it comes to doing theology.  Let me illustrate (to list only a few doctrines):

Text (God’s revealed theology) > existence of God > “attributes of God” > “deity of Christ” > God’s explicit “covenant theology” > “justification by faith alone” > “imputation” > “limited atonement” > implicit covenant theology (covenant of works, etc.) > infant baptism > Molinism > “Dispensationalism” > “Theonomy” > Hyper-Dispensationalism > etc.

I could easily list a dozen scholars who draw their line at “limited atonement.” Everything before that they see as “biblical.” But limited atonement is a “logical deduction” of the Scriptures, not an explicit teaching of any verse or text. Therefore, they don’t believe it. But others find their line after “infant baptism.” There are no explicit cases of infant baptism in the New Testament, and there seems to be a general pattern of “believing and repenting” with being “baptized.” Others see the line before (i.e. Sproul, Piper, etc.) and after (Wright, Dunn, etc.) imputation.

The purpose of this small essay is not to argue for one view of a doctrine or another, but to simply get you thinking about where you draw the line. Because if you don’t recognize how far you’re willing to go in theological doctrine – and why you’re not willing to go there – you may end up in a place God doesn’t really care for, and that you cannot even defend, let alone articulate to yourself or anybody else. What, good, then, is that “theology”?

Drawing a line in such a spectrum is what makes most scholars so unique – but it can also make them dangerous. When Christians should be most cautious is when a fellow believer in Christ (especially when that believer is in a teaching/preaching position) cannot even make distinctions within doctrine (especially their own) as to what is in closer proximity to the teaching of Scripture and what is simply a man-made formulation designed for a purpose other than the pursuit of truth.