Part One: Theology

Chapter 3: The Method of Theology

p. 16 Theology undertakes to express religious truth. As a science, it will require the forming of a harmonious system. Here method is subordinate to its object. The method of theology has done enough if it can express the essence of Christianity clearly and p. 17 achieve a unified coherence; for the object is fixed, but methods wander.¹ Finding a single method is very necessary for the simplification of knowledge. But the object must not be sacrificed to preserve a method. Here, too, lies the defect of the normative sciences, which aim at conceptual generalization: they overlook the specific difference that the particular possesses. In any discipline, the method of treatment may differ with the nature of the object studied, and the form of expression may also change according to the forms the age demands and understands. For the object does not exist in order to prove the method; a suitable method is applied in order to understand the object itself fully. In theology this is felt all the more keenly. In its method, theology may at one time systematize, by the exegesis of Scripture, the truth of Christianity that Scripture means to set forth;² at another, it may make its business the defense of doctrine by investigating the historical tradition of Christianity; and at yet another, it may seek rational grounds in the results of science or of philosophical thought. The task of theology, therefore, will lie in two functions, inner reflection and outward formation, just as human activity examines itself and at the same time acts outward: first, to reduce the manifold of religious experience to unity; and at the same time, to express it in forms suited to the "ideology"³ of the age and fitted to its structures of living.

A glance at the history of theology readily shows that theology's forms of expression have often changed as times changed and places shifted.

p. 18 When Christianity first began, a few people who had seen the revelation and glory of God that appeared in Christ, and who marveled and worshiped, experienced in their own lives, through this one historical fact, the redeeming love and grace of God. Moved by the wish to share this blessed news, which had become their life,⁴ with others too, they spoke it and wrote it, within the limits of their knowledge and experience, in forms the people of their time could understand. After the apostolic age, at the beginning of the patristic period, the history of Christian thought is wrapped in darkness and its exact lineage is hard to make out; yet even here one could glimpse the outline of the church movement that was to unfold. At the time when Christianity was leaving the Jewish tradition behind and turning to the process of becoming a world religion, "we must be grateful that the people of that time, under the banner of a common and united conviction, preserved the characteristics of each people, and interpreted the principles of Christianity through their own particular cultures."⁵ The conversion of Justin shows that Christianity was already conquering intellectual society amid a confused world of thought. When Christianity entered the philosophical atmosphere of Greece, the public declaration that "Greek philosophy is a preparatory stage for Christian revelation"⁶ was, if not a compromise between Greek thought and Christian thought, at least⁷ an attitude that sought to interpret Christian truth through the forms of Greek thought; and although Christianity strenuously excluded the contagion of Greek thought, within the speculative atmosphere of Greece Christian theology came to take on a markedly theoretical coloring. Next, when Christianity entered Rome, it gradually became institutionalized, and Christian theology turned into a theology of heteronomous authority. In an age when intellectual activity had declined, when the freedom of scholarly criticism had been lost and people had fallen into extreme skepticism, there was no better way than to appeal to external authority, p. 19 so silencing reason and providing a concrete standard of faith. But from the Renaissance to the present, theology has on the whole taken its stand on anti-authoritarianism, and has shown a strong tendency to make faith actual in politics, economics, the family, education, and every other sphere of social life.

The knowledge of science, which in modern times has developed astonishingly, has made us abandon the vague common sense of former days and take up a new view of the universe. And this has had an enormous influence on theology as well.⁸ The common sense of modern science, that this world runs in order according to fixed laws, has given us the idea that God governs the universe in his providence by fixed and unchanging laws. The thought that all the phenomena of this universe evolve from the simple to the complex has made us realize that there is historical development in religious thought and gradual growth in the spiritual life. And the tendency to interpret all the things of the universe in the categories of activity rather than fixity, of force rather than being, has given us a dynamic view of God and a vital view of human life.

As we have said, it is a fact that the method of theology has adapted itself to differences in the nature of its object, to changes of time and place, and to the growth of general knowledge. Revealed theology made its business the exegesis of the church's doctrine or of the contents of Scripture. The natural theology of the eighteenth century and after applied the principles and results of modern science to theology, discarded such essentials of traditional revealed theology as miracles, creation, redemption, the Trinity, and the sacraments, and confined the task of theology to three problems: God, freedom, and eternal life.⁹ Just so, modern theology now, amid slackness of spirit¹⁰ and doubt, and the pursuit of pleasure and material comfort, seems to sense p. 20 a confused temper: on the one hand it extols human value and desire, and on the other it is dimly conscious of human crisis.

"The theology urgently needed today is a theology that can sympathize with the spirit of the age and yet not be blind to the spirit of the age" (Horton, 現代心と有神思想 [Theism and the Modern Mood], trans. Takamatsu Kōji, p. 42).¹¹ On the one hand, we must honor Christianity's own distinctive tradition and make our grasp of its truth secure; on the other, we must build theology, with clear-sighted observation and discernment, by the methods the age understands and demands. This age demands that each people examine itself with regard to its own culture. Christianity is the possession of the world. The method of interpreting Christianity, and the form it takes, must therefore be indigenized¹² and made contemporary in the light of each people's cultural forms. This will be the task of theology in this age.

Generally speaking, the methodological definition of theology signifies the divisions of the theological system. The differing methods that have produced the various systems of modern theology harbor many difficulties, yet we believe that each has at least something to offer toward forming a comprehensive conception of the essence of Christianity.

The first thing the one who "does theology" meets is the problem of authority. This is because Christianity is not an abstract concept but a positive, ecclesial, particular religion, and so the content and norms of its truth already exist as historical fact. Authority means the right to control or to command, and by its nature it is heteronomous. It p. 21 provides a basis on which an external standard can be fixed. Christian theology acknowledges the fact of salvation in Christ as absolute truth, and all faith and consciousness, all living, aims, and ideals are built on this given fact. The church, Scripture, and the creeds may be exercised as secondary authorities, insofar as they safeguard that authority.¹³ Belief in authority is necessary to a historical religion with a tradition; and if religion itself consists in the lived appropriation of truth through social experience, then all the more must we respect the cultural values humanity has experienced. Only, we will reject such attitudes as these: letting that authority run into narrow exclusivism, clinging to a stale restorationism, binding the freedom of faith and enforcing a legalistic observance of outward rules, and holding that the virtue of faith lies in blind obedience.

Second, the word "theology" at once calls to mind the speculative method. This seeks the certainty of truth in rational grounds. Rationalism has a long history. The Sophists stressed subjectivism; Descartes, with the results of mathematical natural science, sought "a system of certain and clear truths";¹⁴ and Hegel abandoned the method of traditional formal logic and sought, by means of dialectic, to comprehend living and concrete development. Kant and Schleiermacher,¹⁵ and after them Ritschl and Coleridge,¹⁶ were at one in calling the rationalist tendency that had marked the eighteenth century and after "natural theology," "physico-theology," or "speculative theology," and in subjecting it to sharp criticism.¹⁷ Their reason for opposing rationalism in this way was to correct the narrow attitude that holds the method and results of natural science to be the only valid knowledge. They had come to see that there are real in human beings, p. 22 besides reason, the psychological constituents of faith, such as will and intuition;¹⁸ and so their objection lay in this, that geometrical and logical forms cannot explain the mystery of living religious experience and its profound essence. But their anti-rationalism by no means meant a denial or condemnation of knowledge as a whole. We must seek trustworthy grounds for the religious truth we hold, and they must be such as can satisfy the demands of sound reason.¹⁹

Next, the methods of theology most commonly discussed over the past half-century are the historical method and the psychological method. These two methods have developed independently as separate branches of the science of religion, distinct from Christian theology. But theology, as the "science of faith," cannot altogether disregard them, for the former investigates the social forms of faith, and the latter analyzes its phenomena in consciousness.

The historical method observes religious phenomena of the primitive type and describes the rites and doctrines of the religions of today other than Christianity. The rich material so gained not only offers new suggestions for religious reflection; it has also drawn our attention to the meaningful fact that religion has progressed and developed through social experience. We must take care not to fall into such misunderstandings as making the external structures of religion the measure of faith, or making primitive religious life the basis for defining the essential concept of Christianity, or blending various religions to reconstruct a single abstract "religion."²⁰

The psychological method developed comparatively recently, compared with the historical method. But its results are astonishingly large. The literature of the psychology of religion published in Europe and America since 1920 has grown by leaps in quantity, but in character p. 23 it has been so confused and tangled that one could hardly find any point of unity in it (see my article "A Study of the Methodology of the Psychology of Religion," Sinhak segye [Theological World] 19, no. 6).²¹ Professor John Baillie, in The Interpretation of Religion, divides the contributions of the psychology of religion into five. First, it has traced, genetically and in evolutionary terms, the stage-by-stage development of religious consciousness in the individual's religious life, from infancy through puberty to maturity. Second, it has applied the knowledge so gained to the religious education of the young. Third, it has shown the relation between the psychological phenomena of conversion and adolescence. Fourth, it has studied differences of temperament in religion. And finally, in the assessment of primitive religion, it has taught us to give weight to people's inner thought and feeling rather than to their outward institutions and rites (p. 145).²² But the psychology of religion, as Professor Pratt maintains, must confine itself to analyzing and describing the mental processes of religious experience (Pratt, Religious Consciousness, ch. II).²³ The assessment of truth is a separate problem. The psychological method interprets faith as a compound of various other psychological functions, and seeks to explain faith by analyzing the contents of consciousness and the factors that go to make it up. Since faith cannot be detached from subjective states of experience, study by the psychological method will be possible. But in its essence faith lies not in subjective forms of expression or conditions, but in an attitude of orientation toward, and dependence on, the grace of God, through the total act of the personality. We must understand, therefore, that objective description alone cannot fully explain the heart of faith.

Fifth, there is the introspective method. The introspective method is the method by which each individual seeks to understand the essence of religion p. 24 through reflective self-contemplation of his or her own lived religious experience. Here "lived religious experience"²⁴ is a term that embraces the whole of the life of faith, inspiration, longing, reflection, ideals, obedience, regeneration, sanctification, and the like: it names the experience one has come to know and has tasted for oneself. It is a fact that one cannot reach a deep understanding of religion unless one has first, for oneself, made its life one's own, vitally;²⁵ and that mysterious personal experience has a subtlety that cannot be explained in concepts or handed on to another. Faith is indeed personal. But it must not become a subjective dogmatism. It demands an independent decision. Yet it must become knowledge that can be shared in one form or another. Though knowledge may not be able to supply faith with a proper rational standard, faith can still be the ground and the object of thought.