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”.
No comments:
Post a Comment