Part One: Theology

Chapter 1: The Meaning of Theology

p. 1 Our knowledge can be divided into three departments according to the nature of the objects it knows: knowledge concerning "nature," knowledge concerning "humanity," and knowledge concerning "what is above the human."¹

These divisions rest less on any difference in the actual existence of their objects² than on the distinctive character of each and on the method of scholarly inquiry that follows from it. In the strict sense, then, none of them can stand alone; the more precisely the branches are marked off, the more we are reminded of the connection that keeps them from ever coming apart. "Nature," comprehended under the category of being; "humanity," belonging to the realm of value; and all the religious facts that fall within the field of revelation: together these take in the whole face of the universe. If we neglect or make light of any one of the three, we cannot reach a rounded knowledge. Indeed, p. 2 it is a fact that our truest and most proper knowledge can be gained only by giving to nature, to human life, and to the will of God an attention free of reserve or prejudice.

In determining the essential character of knowledge, we believe that the inner connection of our concepts can even fix precisely the historical place of each of its formal stages. Our knowledge ordinarily begins with the effort to observe and explain natural objects, which are thought to be the simplest and most exact. Here, from the concept of "nature," we can form a view of reality governed by the norms of existence, relation, and development. But even if such a view of reality is established, it would reach the realm of value only secondarily, from a world of pure ideas that does not contain the concept of the ought³; and critical philosophy has made plain to us that this inverts the proper order. Critical philosophy insists that knowledge of the real is impossible without knowledge of the ought; that a sound theory of reality, since it must secure universal validity,⁴ has to include the concept of the ought; and that in the order in which the characteristics of our concepts are determined, the idea of value must be given priority.

The view that value stretches and shrinks relative to the desires or demands of the subject easily falls into the extreme of holding that reality itself is determined by human wishes or usefulness. Yet even if we affirm that value is the objective essence of the structure of the universe, value still requires as its necessary condition the activities that mark a person (desire, resolve, choice, evaluation, and the like), and so it may be called the basic norm of "the science of humanity."

But knowledge of being and value alone cannot satisfy the demands of human reason.⁵ Within the world of ideas, being and value are wholly contingent facts, and our knowledge of them comes down in the end to relating facts already known and already acquired p. 3 and defining their characteristics and uses. Here, alongside the rich capacity for inner development that belongs to human knowledge, there stands an absolute barrier to human knowledge as such. It is out of this poverty of human reason that people seek religious knowledge. Faith interprets all things as coming from the self-giving act of a "Subject" who is beyond the world and humanity.⁶ Here nothing is chance, but everything is revelation; nothing is accident, but everything is creation. When we reflect on the world and on ourselves we are moved to seek God, and without the gratitude and reverence of knowing that all things come from God's creation, providence, and revelation, we cannot reach proper and ultimate knowledge. We therefore maintain that all knowledge must set out from theology. Apart from the concept of revelation we cannot rightly know value, and apart from the concept of the ought we cannot fully judge existence. Truly, as Calvin said: "It is certain that a man cannot arrive at a pure conception of himself unless he first contemplates the face of God and gazes upon it, and so descends to the examination of himself."⁷

What, then, is theology? Theology is the discipline that seeks to understand religious truth systematically.⁸ Christian theology, accordingly, aims to set forth in a normative way the religious truth contained in all the matters of Christian revelation: in theory and practice, in institutions and faith, in scripture and experience, in doctrine and ideals.

Taken in the narrow sense, Christian theology is sometimes called a systematic method that seeks to interpret or to reproduce⁹ the revelation contained in the Christian canon; others p. 4 think of it as the discipline that rightly proclaims and defends the doctrines and creeds the church has framed under God's direction. On the other hand, some take the term¹⁰ "theology" in a broad sense and hold that its task is not so much a method for making Christian tradition authoritative as the philosophical criticism of the truth-claims of religion in general.

The two views just described hold, respectively, that the task of Christian theology must be confined to the tradition Christianity already possesses, and that it must be an evaluation of Christianity by the rational standard of the ultimate essence of religion in general. Both, it may be said, lean too far toward an extreme in their attitude to, and method of, studying Christianity. The first not only shuts "reason" out of any place or value in theology but tends to ignore the meaning of reflection and thought even in religious life. The second disregards the historical particularity of religion and falls into the error of trying first to derive its universal features.

Christian theology can be divided into three branches: first, historical theology; second, theoretical theology; third, practical theology.¹¹ This classification follows the essential tendency that appears in the stages of development of culture in general, which honors the store of values gained from past experience, values the sifting and choosing done by present reason, and aims to set a practical direction for the future. This division is judged the most suitable for establishing a sound conception of theology and an effective method.

Christian theology first examines the whole of the experience that Christianity has actually left in history. In other words, the field of vision of Christian theology must attend first to the historical resources Christianity possesses. This means, first, that since it is Christian theology it must be Christian; and second, that Christian theology, before p. 5 drawing abstract conclusions, must first take living, concrete experience as its standard.

The historical experience of Christianity is exceedingly various and has no order or system. Just as the flowers and grasses of a field spring up as they will and grow as they will, so Christian experience too has found natural expression across the wide, open plain of life, according to the particular circumstances of individuals and the differing structures of history. Now, just as a botanist looks at grasses and flowers scattered in this way and classifies and combines them by their likenesses and differences, so theology takes as its material the many religious values that humanity has experienced in the past, orders them by their features, and builds them into a system.¹² Of course, there are times when it is good to see religious experience in the original form in which it naturally expressed itself. But at other times, in the coolest frame of mind, we may split this apart and gather that together, and so understand more clearly, in a universal form, truths that were not easily seen at a glance.

The literature recording the Christian experience that has appeared in history is of many kinds in character and in value. There are the scriptures of the Hebrew religion and of Judaism (the Law, the poetical books, and the Prophets), the Talmud, and the intertestamental literature.¹³ There is the New Testament, which gathers the accounts of Jesus' deeds, the lives of the apostles, and the letters to the churches produced by the earliest Christianity. There are the rites and institutions, the ideals and works, the doctrines and creeds of the church that has grown up over the nearly two thousand years since the beginning of our era. And there are the confessions of faith and autobiographies of the saints, and much other religious writing.

We can study these historical experiences one at a time, each on its own. But when we pick out what is alike p. 6 and divide off what is different, and attend to the stages of their systematic development, we come to see how much freer in form and how much richer in result is the method that seeks to understand human life through the experience of living, compared with rationalizing religion through metaphysical speculation. Each experience supplies typical material for the essential concept of religion, and so links each particular moment of life to universal principles; at the same time each experience keeps its own absolutely unique place and opens a new epoch of the truth embodied in history.

But Christian theology is not satisfied merely with examining historical experience. The experience of those who went before is precious, but unless I make it my own it cannot become a gift of any worth to me. To learn theology does not stop at knowing what people of old did and how they believed, and committing it to memory. One must follow the path of those who went before and strive to reach one's own sure convictions and one's own personal experience.¹⁴ Religious faith contains a spirit¹⁵ that will not be moved except by truth, and will not set its hand to anything it has not understood for itself. What I have not experienced directly for myself has no power, even if it moves me, and does not become meaningful work, even if I labor at it. The mark of theology, therefore, is the close bond between the inner experience of the one who studies it and the discipline itself. In other words, religious truth can be held more firmly through the principle of religious experience, and the certainty of religious truth stands in direct proportion to the depth of one's religious insight. The great theologian, then, will be one who has had a religious experience that has pierced to the very bone. Truly, for theology, p. 7 more important than laboring over the construction of a system as a "science" is "doing theology":¹⁶ that is, attending to the experience of faith, and having passion and longing for it. This is faith's examination of itself in the form of conceptual thought,¹⁷ the activity that seeks to raise each particular moment of life, as valid knowledge, into a principle of eternal worth.

Therefore the experience one has come to understand for oneself must meet the demands of reason, both in its inner content and in its outward relations. Sound knowledge must have harmony in its order and no contradiction from first to last. Of course, if we take pleasure only in splitting up contents and arranging headings, we easily lose the living heart of dynamic religion; and if we attend only to laws and order, we easily miss the mystery of life. But merely laying out this and that is not theology. Gathering must have its logic, and arrangement must be made to form a system.

And even if Christian thought has built a harmonious system within itself, it may still come into contradiction, in its outward relations, with other general knowledge. Christian thought must therefore strive to reduce contradiction to a minimum, not only within itself but also with knowledge in general outside theology. If Christian theology and some other knowledge outside theology run counter to each other, our reason cannot accept both as true at once. To say that theology must not run counter to knowledge in general is not to say that there is no distinction between theology and other knowledge, nor that theology must always follow "the knowledge of the world"; it is to point out the principle that two contradictory concepts cannot both be accepted as true. Indeed, we today p. 8 have the task of making clear that theology and "the knowledge of the world" differ and yet are connected, are distinct and yet do not run counter to each other.

Finally, Christian theology must be assumed to have a practical aim. Tradition is the experience of humanity selected, at each stage of historical development, according to the direction of its purposes; a norm is a universal made into law by logical necessity. Tradition and norm, then, in each person's religious reflection, must make clear that person's basic religious theory and at the same time give that person the principle and the power to act. In other words, theology must not stop at abstract theory¹⁸ but must strive to provide principles and standards for actual life. The comprehending work of theology as a "science" is not arbitrary, because it stands at once as the conceptual expression of particular experiences and as a guiding norm. But this does not mean that theology first reaches metaphysical truth through pure ideas and then uses that knowledge as a tool to serve the needs of practical life. That position presupposes that a metaphysical view of reality can be established apart from the experience of value, and that value grounded in human desire already exists apart from any objective ground; and neither presupposition escapes theoretical difficulty. We have maintained that we must first believe in the objectivity of the world of values; that the reality of the universe must include the objective facts of value; and that at the essential core of reality the idea of value must hold first place. Our view of reality, therefore, is always a norm of reason that is at the same time a necessity of practice, and a necessity of practice that is at the same time p. 9 a norm of reason.¹⁹