Theology course: Week 5 reflection

Last week we looked at the incommunicable attributes of God, so this week the lesson was on the communicable attributes of God, namely holiness and love.

Just like what I said about last week’s lesson, these attributes are by no means unfamiliar. But the fact that there were only two attributes (as opposed to five last week) meant that we could go at a slower pace and there was more space for the lecturer to explain or elaborate on various points. Also, most Christians should be familiar with the idea that God is holy and God is love, and no weird jargon was involved, so the lesson was more digestible for me 😂

The lecturer said these attributes are considered “communicable” because they are qualities that God shares with His creation, although humans can only possess these attributes in a limited and imperfect way. To me, using the word “share” was a bit odd, because it’s not like I share a slice of cake with you and then you have some cake and I also have some cake. Like, God is holy and then He says, “Here, have some holiness”?

Hmmm… but now that I think about it, He does actually do that. I mean, when we look at what Christ’s sacrifice did for us on the cross, that’s precisely what the Father did, isn’t it? We are only able to be holy because He makes us holy by cleansing us of all unrighteousness (1 Jn 1:9). And we are only able to love because He first loved us (I Jn 4:19). So… shared attributes. Hmmm.

The lecturer said that these shared attributes “are the very qualities that allow us to reflect God’s image”. I think that’s interesting, especially in relation to love, since Jesus did say that people will recognise us as His disciples by our love for one another (Jn 13:34-35). And because we humans are able to possess these attributes (even though in an imperfect way), we can kind of understand what God is like and relate to Him – we know what it is to love, so we can somewhat understand what it means when Scripture says, “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8).

Of course, we interpret ‘love’ through the lens of our own experiences, upbringing, and cultural background, as I mentioned in last week’s reflection. So maybe our understanding of God’s love will also always be imperfect, just as we will not be able to love Him (or anyone else) perfectly. Speaking of understanding God’s love, this is something that I shared during the week 3 class when we went into breakout groups and talked about an experience that helped us understand our Christian faith: I always knew that God loves us unconditionally; I was taught this from the time I was a child. But I didn’t truly understand it until my little nephew was born. I remember holding this tiny baby in my arms and being just totally in love with him... despite the fact that he had done nothing to make me love him. But I still loved him so much even when I had to change his stinky poopy diapers and clean his bumbum. This little guy was totally helpless and literally could do nothing to earn my love. He didn’t even know who I was at that point! That was when it hit me that this must be how God loves us. God just looks down on us and is filled with so much love… we don’t have to make ourselves worthy of His love. Coming from a home where I felt I had to meet parental expectations in order to be “good enough”, this was a lightbulb moment for me that I’ll never forget.

Most Christians know that God’s love is known or characterised as “agape love”, which CS Lewis made famous in his book The Four Loves. I never properly read that book but my parents had a copy, so I was aware of the concept, and maybe in my 47 years of life I’ve heard one or two sermons on God’s agape love along the way. ‘Agape’ is a Greek word that is usually translated as a sacrificial, unconditional love. The lecturer referred to the interpretation of agape love based on a book by Anders Nygren, a Swedish theologian: Agape and Eros.

Agape flows from God’s nature, not the worth of the object. Because, like I said earlier, my little nephew could do nothing to make himself worthy to me; likewise, we humans can do nothing to make ourselves worthy to God. So agape is not moved by worthiness or merit, but it creates value in the beloved. Like how I loved my baby nephew, and my love then gave him value, if you see what I mean. Agape is therefore transforming – the example given by the lecturer was like how by loving and accepting Zacchaeus, Jesus called him into a new life (Lk 19:1-10). It also always acts first and does not wait for the other party to initiate (mostly, I think, because we can’t. We can’t even have faith unless the Spirit enables us (1 Cor 12:3)).

The lecturer talked about agape being a motif of Christianity, meaning that it’s a recurring theme in the Bible. He gave a very detailed explanation of ‘motif’, along with ‘nuance’ and ‘metaphor’, but I personally think it is understandable by just saying that motif is an idea or theme that is repeated throughout a narrative. Maybe I’m biased because I have some understanding of literary devices due to my background in linguistics, but I do think that examples of the agape motif throughout Scripture would have been sufficient to help us see how this concept constantly shows up in the Biblical narrative.

Since the lecturer was referring to Nygren’s book, he also included Nygren’s understanding of ‘eros’, a different kind of love. Nygren’s interpretation is different from Lewis’ interpretation – the latter referred to eros as erotic love, which if I am not mistaken is often considered physical sexual love. But Nygren’s view of eros sees it as “arising from need and lack, seeking what it does not have”, a selfish kind of love that wants to acquire and is motivated by the value of the loved one (or the object). Like, you see something beautiful and you want to own it or be like it, maybe even be it.

The idea is that while God is agape, humans are eros? That’s what I understood from the lecture. That humans love God with this selfish kind of love that seeks self-fulfilment and desires beauty & immortality (because we want to hold on to those beautiful things forever)… and therefore eros helps us find our way to God because God is the “Absolute Beauty” and we “strive upward”? I mean, this concept is kinda weird to me and I don’t really see the point in including this in the lesson because at this point we had deviated from God’s communicable attributes, moving instead to a human attribute. But still, okay I agree that humans are inherently selfish but I don’t agree that this selfishness causes us to strive toward God because we know that idolatry exists. If this concept of eros were true, the Israelites wouldn’t have ended up worshipping the golden calf… just sayin’. I know the lecturer was only able to give us a very brief summary of the concept and maybe I didn’t understand it properly, but this is what I got from the class, so… 🤷🏻‍♀️

Moving on! The other communicable attribute of God is holiness, which was highly emphasised in the Old Testament. I think it is interesting that holiness is not as emphasised in the New Testament. It is certainly mentioned, but in my opinion the focus of the NT seems to be more of what Christ has done for us and how we should respond in return. God’s holiness seems to take a back seat as we no longer have to “fear” Him in the way that the Israelites did (we no longer have to face consequences like the guy who got zapped dead just because he dared to touch the Ark of the Covenant to prevent it from falling off the cart drawn by oxen, in 2 Sam 6:6-7). We also no longer have to follow the long list of rituals and offerings for sins which are listed in Leviticus. Those served to remind the Israelites that God was holy and that they had to take sin seriously, because His holiness would not allow Him to dwell among them if sin was present.

Something new that I learnt from the class is that “sin pollutes not only individuals, but the community and the sanctuary itself”. Our lecturer spoke at length about the Jews’ annual “Day of Atonement”, or “Yom Kippur”, where the high priest would make atonement for himself and his family first by sacrificing a bull, then make atonement for the Israelites by sacrificing a goat. This was for unintentional sins that he and the community had committed over the period of the past year. Because, even if we don’t deliberately sin, due to our sinful nature (and the Fall) all of humanity is already inherently impure – this is my understanding – and also, don’t forget that there are also sins of omission, which we often do not take into account or do not realise. We would also have had fleeting sinful thoughts and/or perhaps less fleeting sinful attitudes (including stubbornness and rebellion!) which we also may not have noticed or err, have been in denial about 🙈

So on Yom Kippur, the high priest was to take the blood of the sacrificed bull and goat and enter the Most Holy Place in the Tabernacle, where he would sprinkle the blood over and in front of atonement lid, or mercy seat, to “make atonement for the Most Holy Place because of the uncleanness and rebellion of the Israelites, whatever their sins have been” (Lev 16:16, NIV), then go out to the altar of incense in the Holy Place to place the blood on all the horns of the altar and sprinkle the blood on the altar seven times, using his finger. After completing all this, he would have made atonement “for the Most Holy Place, the Tent of Meeting and the altar” (Lev 16:20, NIV).

To be honest, my eyes have always glazed over while reading Leviticus, so I did not realise that even the Tabernacle itself had required cleansing. The lecturer told us that sin defiles not only people, but also places and items. As stated in Num 35:33 (NET): “You must not pollute the land where you live, for blood defiles the land, and the land cannot be cleansed of the blood that is shed there, except by the blood of the person who shed it.” Whoa. Now I am thinking of Sudan and Ukraine and Gaza, and other lands where war and bloodshed have occurred. Oooh boy. That is a lot of defiled land. 

The “scapegoat” part of Yom Kippur, that one I knew. The high priest is to place his hands on a second goat, confess all the sins and transgressions of the people over it, “put them on the goat’s head” (Lev 16:21) and then the goat is sent far away into the desert. Our lecturer said this served as a visual demonstration of how sin must be expelled in order for God’s presence to remain – because He is holy and cannot dwell among a sinful people. But I believe it was also a foreshadowing of how one day Christ, the Lamb of God (erm, okay, not goat 😅) would remove our sins “as far as the east is from the west” (Ps 103:12).

Actually, in the course outline, this week's class was also supposed to cover grace, mercy, longsuffering, truth, and lovingkindness (plus righteousness and goodness, but I guess those kinda overlap somewhat with holiness and a few of the others). I guess the lecturer tweaked his content, maybe after the experience of teaching last week’s class where it was so difficult to fully explain so many concepts all at once.

Theology course: Week 4 reflection

If I thought last week was philosophical, this week’s topic almost did me in… 

The topic was “The incommunicable attributes of God”. Why are they incommunicable? Apparently because they are not passed on or “communicated” to humans or other creatures, because these attributes belong only to God. Ummm my first thought was: that is not how I understand ‘communicable’ 😅 But now that I’m writing this reflection, I remembered (or the Holy Spirit reminded me) of the term ‘communicable diseases’ which kinda uses the word in the same context, so yeah, I get it. I guess it was just such an odd context in which to hear this word being used, because when it comes to God, I don’t normally consider that He has any characteristics which are shared… He is so separate from us and so ‘other’ that I had not really considered that we have much in common at all!

The lecturer covered five incommunicable attributes of God: Aseity (I knowwwwww. What on earth is that?!), independence, simplicity, immutability, and infinity. Of all of these, I had only heard of “immutable” and “infinite” before, as applied to God. ‘Immutable’ describes God’s unchanging nature (“the same yesterday, today, and forever”: Heb 13:8). In my experience ‘infinite’ usually refers to His infinite love, but in this class I learnt that by itself, ‘infinite’ refers to the fact that God is not bound by time or space because He is Lord of it; that’s how He is eternal and omnipresent. These are all pretty familiar concepts. So far, so good.

The lecturer asked us to consider how God’s immutability jives with the parts of Scripture that say, “God changed His mind” (after someone prayed to Him) or “God was angry with Israel for her disobedience”. Apparently, some people suggest that this cancels out immutability because changing your mind is… change… and getting angry is also a change of emotional state, which is… change. I was like eh?

I cannot conceive that there are people who enjoy nitpicking and arguing about such things. God’s immutable nature means that His core personhood – His values and character – does not change. Is that not obvious? He’s the Rock of Ages (Isa 26:4), that means you can trust in who He is. That’s about His core personhood. 

I liked how the lecturer further elaborated that the Bible uses “anthropomorphic language” to describe God in human ways because that’s the only way we could understand certain things. You always interpret and understand something (or someone) from the lens of your own background and experiences. We don’t have anything else that we could use to describe God, or that could help us to understand Him. So we would ascribe certain human reactions to Him – this certainly explains why He would say, “I am a jealous God” to the Israelites (Ex 20:5; Ex 34:14), which seems odd for an all-powerful being to say, especially one that has no need for people’s allegiance, because He is self-sufficient.

Which brings us to the attribute of ‘independent’: God is self-sufficient and doesn’t derive His power, holiness, or knowledge from any external sources; He also isn’t dependent on anyone, as He is all-powerful and sovereign; and He makes decisions based on His own will, not forced by any outside source. So why then did He create us, if He doesn’t need us or need our worship?

The lecturer explained this by giving us Thomas Aquinas’ analogy of God being like the sun. The sun radiates light and gives out heat due to its nature, not because it intends to or wants to; likewise, God creates (created?) because it is part of His nature. But I’m not so sure about this because, if so, God should be constantly creating. Is He constantly creating? If we just look at our Earth, well, maybe He is. He’s not creating something from nothing, like bringing us into being, but He is creating in the sense that there is new life sprouting every day from the ground, and new babies being born, and baby animals too. Can be considered creating? I guess so.

God is Creator and therefore He is the one who came before everything: This is another attribute, the one with the weird name (well, it’s weird to me – turns out it’s from Latin): Aseity. I have heard of God being “the uncaused first cause” and that’s basically what ‘aseity’ means. I have to admit I was put off by the name because it feels like jargon. I know every field and industry has its own jargon, but I often feel like jargon makes ideas and concepts inaccessible to people because the words are unfamiliar and scary and it freaks people out, making them think that this is some incomprehensible piece of knowledge that only those with some kind of specialist training or expertise would be able to understand.

Anyway, the idea that God was there before time even existed and that He exists “of Himself, in Himself, and through Himself” is also not a new one to me; it’s just that I didn’t know what that characteristic was called. As the Creator, all creatures exist from Him, through Him, and for Him, that’s why He’s the sovereign one and Lord over all creation. Logical, right? 

Perhaps if the lecturer were to lead with the description of the attribute before giving the name of the attribute, it would not seem so scary and it would be easier for us to grasp. Cos the moment I saw that foreign word, it was like my mind threw up a mental block and I was already bracing for a complicated and difficult concept. But actually, it is not that difficult nor abstract. Also, the lecturer led with this attribute before going into the other four, and I think I know why because everything seems to flow from God being "the uncaused first cause". But at the time, because my brain felt overloaded from the start trying to make sense of this unfamiliar term and the philosophical thinking attached to it, that made the rest of the lecture feel like wading through quicksand 😭

Here is said philosophical reasoning, quoting from my lecturer’s slides:

“Aseity is what makes God a necessary being (one that cannot not exist). If God lacks aseity, then God is a contingent being (one that could not exist). His existence would depend on some prior cause, condition, or reality.”

It was a bit difficult to wrap my head around this part, but in the end, it still boils down to the fact that God is not a created being and He existed before everything. Because, if He were created, then He wouldn’t be God – He would be on our level.

And, because He is “the uncaused first cause”, He is the source of everything else and can call things into being out of nothing. Whereas, as my lecturer said, if God were created, then He wouldn’t have this power: “He would be more of a shaper or organiser of reality rather than its ultimate source.” Think about it; when we humans “create”, we can’t make something out of nothing. We can only take existing materials and make something new with them. Like, when we’re painting, we need the paint and canvas for us to bring that piece of art into existence. But God doesn’t need to use anything else to create because He is self-sufficient.

So yes, I think it is a pretty straightforward concept wrapped up in complicated language. The last attribute of God was “simplicity”, which in this context has a different meaning from the everyday word. It means God is not made up of parts or divided attributes – “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut 6:4). The lecturer contrasted this with the Greek and Roman deities, where each deity was assigned a different trait, such as the god of war, the goddess of love, etc. But our God doesn’t just possess those traits; they are an intrinsic part of who He is, e.g. He is love (1 Jn 4:8).

This reflection is too ridiculously long (MS Word tells me it is currently 1298 words) but I’m also writing to help me remember the stuff I’ve learnt. I would fail if I was actually doing this for my assignment, cos the lecturer only wanted 300-400 words 😂 Overall, I think I understand better after writing this reflection than when I was listening to the lecture, cos there was so much information packed into the 2.5 hours and it was all just touch and go, touch and go, moving so fast that I started to feel like I was experiencing information overload (especially when it’s 10pm on a weekday, after working a full day and battling 1.5 hours of traffic to get home in time to log in to Zoom at 7:30pm). But now that I’ve had the opportunity to process the information, I find that it wasn’t that incomprehensible or overwhelming after all.

Theology course: Week 3 reflection

Aaaaa I am behind in my reflections! The lesson took place on 4 Sept and look what date today is… *eep I am a bad student* 🙈

   

In this lesson, we covered the last source of theology (religious experience) from last week and then went on to how God is revealed to His creation. Using human religious experience to understand Christian theology is something that I guess most Christians do, but maybe the charismatic or AOG (Assemblies of God) churches rely on more? I know that I’ve definitely noticed how the “rah rah churches” (as I like to call them) use music to create an atmosphere and stir up the emotions, particularly during altar calls. I’ve come to distrust this as I see it as a kind of psychological manipulation. 

I remember attending cell group leader training at one church and being taught how to select songs which move from fast to slow so that you can build up the atmosphere… yes, they really said that! “Build up the atmosphere”! It made me wonder, do we actually believe that the Holy Spirit can move people or are we feeling like we have to “help” Him – or worse, simulate His presence?

Anyway, to move on before I get stuck here and write 1,500 words on this alone, there’s also intellectual experience and religious experience, so not everything is about emotions and psychological experience. Religious experience includes divine encounters (such as the moment you are convicted by the Holy Spirit and decide to accept Christ) but also just simply trusting God’s promises and participating in acts of worship such as praying and singing worship songs. All this is not an issue for me but I feel that there’s a fine line between divine encounters and psychological experience because I think sometimes we want something so much that when we pray for it, it’s easy to misread the “signs” and interpret them to mean whatever we want them to mean.

When we moved on to the “revelation of God”, things turned so philosophical that I gave up on even writing notes at some point. The lecturer sends us his slides after every class, but I prefer my notes because I try to write things down in a way that I can understand them. He does go through the slides so fast that I can barely write anything down sometimes, but I still try to take things down because I can’t just sit there and listen – I would fall asleep 😂

We started with “natural theology” and what I think was a chronological progression through the views of natural theology through the ages? That is a question mark because I’m not sure lol. But first we were given Thomas Aquinas’ views on natural theology, then John Calvin’s views on it, then the concept of “God’s two Books” during the Renaissance in the 17th century, then the Eastern Orthodox view of natural theology, then Karl Barth & Emil Brunner’s opposing views of natural theology. So I looked it up: Aquinas lived from about 1224 to 1274; Calvin from 1509-1564; Barth from 1886-1968; Brunner from 1889-1966. That is chonological. But the Eastern Orthodoxy concept of natural theology pre-dates Aquinas (it was already being spread during the Byzantine era, as stated by Bradshaw (2020)) so I’m not sure why this was in the middle of all the others instead of being the first?

I think I kinda understand natural theology because Rom 1:19-20 states that God's “invisible attributes” (ESV) have been revealed and therefore can be perceived in all of His creation, in the natural world. So Aquinas' idea that creation carries God's fingerprints definitely is Scriptural. I don’t think Calvin's theory contradicts Aquinas; Calvin said that we can understand or know God as Creator by reflecting on His creation, as it reveals His divine wisdom & grace. So they’re all essentially saying the same thing, even the Eastern Orthodox dogma, except for Barth, who was against the idea that you could get to know God by studying His creation, and insisted that we can only rely on revelation from God through Christ (at least, that’s what I understood from the lesson). Everyone else seems to have accepted that you could have both sources of revelation. I would have liked to know how Barth interpreted or explained Rom 1:19-20. 

After that we moved to “philosophy of religion” – this is where I stopped taking notes, and I didn’t really absorb anything until we moved on to “revelation of God”, where we got back to Barth and his concept of the three forms of the Word of God. But I was confused why we went from “philosophy of religion” to “revelation of God” – because isn't natural theology also part of the revelation of God, so shouldn't it be a sub-topic? Therefore this topic of “revelation of God” should come first, and “natural theology” come later as natural theology is a more specific form of revelation? (To be precise: revelation through God's creation) 

I quite liked the “revelation of God” part, in particular Barth's concept of “three forms of the Word”. So we have the revealed Word (Christ), the written Word (Scripture), and the proclaimed Word (teachings and sermons which contextualise Scripture and make it relevant for today’s believers). All this makes sense to me; also his 3Rs concept that shows that each member of the Trinity is involved in revealing God to us: The Father starts the ball rolling by revealing Himself, then Jesus is sent as a concrete embodiment of God and a tangible revelation, not to mention He is the Word (Jn 1:1) so this revelation also includes the Bible, God’s Word. Lastly, the Holy Spirit dwells in us, helping us to understand God (Jn 16:13), and illuminates Scripture as well, making it come alive for us. The 3Rs are not a new concept to me, just that I had not heard them presented in such a neat package next to each other. They are called 3Rs because the Father is the Revealer, Jesus is the Revelation, and Holy Spirit is the Revealedness(!). From the point of view of an English teacher, I really think Barth was trying too hard with that last R...

Theology course: Week 2 reflection

This week the lesson was about four sources of theology: Scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. We covered the first three. Theology is said to be “conducting a study of God in order to understand Him and our relationship with Him” (a loose semi-paraphrase based on my understanding of last week’s lesson). The branches of theology, which I wrote about in last week’s reflection, are tools and methods used in this process of trying to understand God. So this week it was about where do we get the information about God in order to understand Him.

I put off writing this reflection because I found the class very theoretical. Like, there was a lot of information -- new information -- and I felt that I was being bombarded with all this new information without being given the time to absorb it and understand what it means or why it is important to know. For example: Under ‘Scripture’ as a source of theology, I learnt that the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible (the OT) is called the Septuagint, and that was good to know since I had heard of the Septuagint before but didn’t know what it is (seen it mentioned in footnotes in some of my Bibles, in passages where a word has possible alternative interpretations). But I don’t just want to know what it is, I want to know other stuff like perhaps how accurate the translation is considered to be, who translated it, and when it was translated. The lecturer did say that he’s just giving us an overview or introduction and that we would have to delve into the various topics more deeply on our own if we wanted to know more, but I was frustrated nevertheless. 

When the discussion moved to ‘tradition’ as a source of theology, I could identify with this somewhat since I'm in a church which is fairly liturgical and still recites the Apostles’ Creed (usually on Holy Communion Sundays, once a month). Then again, I have never thought of liturgy or the Apostles’ Creed to be sources of theology; I have thought of them as reflecting theology, which is to say that doctrine comes first and liturgy & the creeds need to correctly portray the doctrine, otherwise they ought to get thrown out. 

As I was writing the above, it occurred to me to wonder what’s the difference between theology and doctrine, so I did the usual thing and googled it. Two quotes:

Theology, or Christian theology, is the more general term. It refers to the study of the God of the Bible. Doctrine refers to the specific teachings about God that are found in a study of theology such as the “doctrine” of salvation or the “doctrine” of the afterlife. —Don Stewart, Blue Letter Bible

...doctrine typically refers to the primary teachings of a particular denomination or church. Orthodox Christian doctrine elaborates the dogma (core beliefs) that have been set forth in the historic and orthodox creeds (e.g. the Apostles Creed and the Nicene Creed). Though most churches embrace the creeds as the core of their doctrinal teaching, different doctrines have emerged from this core. ...Theology explores the ways in which doctrine (and dogma) are understood. ...Christian theology is the study of God based on the teachings of the Bible—a study that includes all aspects of God, including his deity, nature, purpose, attributes, relationship to the world and other beings, and more. —Ted Johnston, Grace Communion Seminary

 Oooookay. Getting technical here. 

Anyway, then the lecturer went into the Reformation and how the Reformers waged war against tradition because accepting tradition as a source of theology had allowed practices & doctrines such as indulgences, purgatory, and dogmas about Mother Mary to develop and be accepted into the church even though they weren’t rooted in Scripture. I can see their point, which is why I said earlier that doctrine should come before tradition, but since I have just found out that doctrine refers to the teachings of a particular denomination (which, come to think of it, explains why the Roman Catholic church continues to hold on to the teachings about purgatory and Mother Mary) then it makes sense that the Reformers’ battle cry was “Sola scriptura” -- Scripture alone. Scripture should shape both doctrine and tradition; I totally agree with that.

I think the lecturer was laying out historical events in a chronological order (how tradition had originally been accepted as a source of theology, then the Reformers turning against it and insisting on going back to Scripture alone) but somehow I got confused... maybe because I didn’t understand the difference between theology and doctrine. 

But he lost me totally when he went on to the third source of theology, which is ‘reason’. Scholastic theology I understood, even if I wondered if it was really necessary to know what a “syllogism” is and to know that Thomas Aquinas used that. But Enlightenment Rationalism (an intellectual movement of the 7th-18th centuries) rejects the need for divine revelation and tradition, emphasising human reason as the supreme authority for knowledge (I am plagiarising from my lecturer’s slides here... heh). So it seems to reject God? Then why is it included under “reason” as a way to understand God? And then we have analytic theology, which came after Enlightenment Rationalism (in the 20th-21st centuries), and I understood that too, but I didn’t really understand the difference between scholastic and analytic theology (despite the nice table that the lecturer put up to show a comparison of the two side-by-side). And analytic theology didn’t seem to be a response or pushback against Enlightenment Rationalism? So why was the latter even mentioned? Superrrrrrrr confused. 

I think mostly I felt that the lecture was a bit dry, perhaps because so much information was packed into 2.5 hours that the lecturer did not really have time to dwell on any of the points. It was just touch and go, touch and go, a bit like a choo-choo train and I didn’t understand the significance of some of the things we were being taught. I’m a person who always likes to know, Why do I need to know this? or, How is this applicable? 

The main takeaway I got from this class is that it’s dangerous to rely on tradition as a source of theology because tradition can kinda take on a life of its own. As humans, we get very comfortable with the way we do things. We find comfort in the familiar. Each Sunday, we sit in the same place in church even though we have the option not to. Habits are formed, and later become so ingrained that they’re hard to break. In a sense, traditions are simply one type of habit. I can understand why the Reformation caused the split from the Roman Catholic Church. It would be hard for the church and all her leaders to admit that they had gone wrong and believed in -- not to mention taught / practised -- the wrong thing. There would be ego involved (although there shouldn’t be) because leaders are human beings too, and even if they did accept that they were wrong after being confronted, there would probably be the concern, “If we do admit to this, then what if people turn against the church and start leaving the faith?” Tradition needs to be rooted in Scripture, not just be “something that we do” or “the way things are done because we have always done it this way”. 

Theology course: Week 1 reflection

This was the first class, so the lecturer was giving some background on the various types of theologies such as practical theology, historical theology, biblical theology, philosophical theology, systematic theology, and analytic theology. I had no idea there were so many branches of theology! 

I think I'm most drawn to practical theology because, as the name implies, it's practical. The lecturer said it is about "understanding God by exploring how faith is lived out in the Church and daily life". I like learning stuff that I can apply and that can help me in a more concrete way. That makes it meaningful -- I can see the utility of it and then the learning feels purposeful. 

Some people like intellectual exercises and arguing about theories but I really don't see the point in that. Even when I was doing my masters in linguistics, I felt impatient with the theories about first language acquisition. They are theories for a reason: there's no real way to prove how babies pick up language and learn language. This means that it's all speculation! And what's the point of speculating when you're never going to know the actual answer? It's just a waste of time! 

Anyway, back to theology. Apart from practical theology, I think I'm interested in both biblical and historical theology as secondary choices. Biblical theology, the lecturer said, is about "understanding God by studying His Words in the Bible" and historical theology is about "understanding God by examining how the Church has understood Him throughout history, tracing how the Christian faith & Christian life has been expressed across times and cultures". The former seems like a deep dive into the Word and I'm a language kind of person, so I think I might like that, although sometimes analysing the words used and the way sentences were structured does feel a bit like majoring in the minors -- like trying too hard to read into the smallest detail. I also haven't forgotten that I'd probably have to learn Hebrew to do this with the OT and Greek to do this with the NT! 

As for historical theology, I think it would give me a glimpse of the role that culture plays out in faith and practice? I don't know if I'm getting this quite right but that's the impression I got. I think cultural context is important, especially when interpreting the Bible, but most often laymen like me don't have much, if any, knowledge of the cultural context, so that hampers our understanding of certain passages, I'm sure. 

This brings me to something the lecturer said in response to a question from one of my classmates: the question was about clashing doctrines, such as acceptance or rejection of gay church leaders (if I remember correctly). The lecturer said doctrine doesn't change, but our understanding of it or interpretation of it does. The example he gave, which I thought was brilliant, was that in the past people used to think that the sun revolved around the earth, but with the advancement of science and technology, invention of more powerful telescopes and mathematical calculations and satellites and so on, we now know that the earth revolves around the sun. However, in reality, the fact of the matter is that nothing has changed and the earth has always revolved around the sun, whether or not we've known it or acknowledged it. 

This also made me think about how humans used to think the earth is flat. A wrong thinking does not negate the truth, it just obscures the truth; so we are unable to see, grasp, or know the truth. However, what is worrying to me is that if doctrine can be misinterpreted by trained and learned people (a.k.a. theologians, seminarians, priests, and pastors) -- especially trained and learned people who are supposed to be able to discern God's truth and teach it to the masses -- then we have ajaran sesat. 

Of course, there has always been pockets of ajaran sesat here and there in the form of cults. But we recognise cults because they are extreme and also because some of their teachings are not strictly scriptural. For some issues like homosexuality, we can read for ourselves what Scripture says about that; but then along comes a bunch of trained and learned people who say that oh, that interpretation didn't take into account the historical and cultural context, and therefore it wasn't meant to be a blanket thing but specific only unto the group of people that Paul was writing to... um, how are we, the laymen, supposed to know what is the correct doctrine, if even the pastors and theologians do not know? And if the pastors and theologians lead people astray because they earnestly think their understanding of the doctrine is correct, then how???

We trust that our pastors and preachers are seeking God and are led by the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is supposed to "guide us into all truth" (Jn 16:13). But then hor, how can there be two separate truths? With two separate camps and diametrically opposed viewpoints? This is what confuses people and then we don't know what to think. Which one should we believe? 

(Although, if we go back to the example of homosexuality, then I personally tend to think that the preachers who try to explain it or excuse it from being considered a sin are probably allowing their bias to influence their reading and interpretation of Scripture; and the reason I think this is because I feel secular values such as 'inclusivity' have infiltrated some of the churches, resulting in a pressure to make people feel welcome vs. potentially offending them or causing them to feel shame; also, the belief that one's sexual orientation could be innate and therefore, being born with it, the person should not be faulted for it and God should accept them as they are, not see it as something sinful or to be fought against -- this puts pressure on church leadership to also not 'demonise' those with a different sexual orientation other than what has traditionally been accepted. My personal stance on this is that the orientation is different from the lifestyle; one may not have control over the former, but one does have control over the latter; and from Scripture I think it is possible to argue that Paul and the others refer to the lifestyle rather than the sexual orientation, by which I mean, you can't control whom you're attracted to, but you can control what you do about it.)

Now I have veered into precisely the kind of theoretical territory that I said above I do not like ::rolls eyes at self:: Conjectures and hypotheses can be interesting -- I like to understand things, to try to make sense of things, especially why people act the way they do and why they think the way they do. But in the end, this kind of stuff just lives inside your head. I don't see it as transformative or even impactful. 

Back to school... sort of

Been awhile since I last posted here. I just started a 12-week theology course (single subject, rather) and wanted to write about my experience. Remembered I have this blog and thought, why not use it? This is the course I'm taking: