Descriptive Word
Tuesday, August 22, 2023
8:17 PM
When we begin to work with a theological concept, we need to recognize that our experiences of life, religion, relationships, and study exert a powerful influence on our pre-formed conceptions. This is the purpose of naming "embedded" theology from "deliberative" or "critical" theology. It is to name that
even if a term like "soteriology" may be new to us, we already have some conception of our theology of
salvation. When our lives are stable, our natural tendency is to repeat and defend our embedded
theology. Significant life change, tragedy, interactions with people who are radically different from us,
and a host of life experiences can cause us to rethink our embedded theology. However, I believe that
the study of theology is an intentional practice of examining our embedded conceptions and to test
their adequacy.
In that spirit, I encourage you to begin your work by seeking to "objectively" define theological
terminology. I put "objectively" in quotation marks because I recognize the impossibility of being
completely objective with theology. However, you want to at least make the effort. In other words,
before you prescribe your theological position, describe the concepts impartially. Years ago, I taught
academic debate. I told my students then that they must be able to "summarize their opponent's
position in terms and tone their opponent finds acceptable." It is too easy to twist a person's words and
make them sound sinister or silly or fallacious. Such twisting is not academically defensible. It is far
more persuasive to be able to adequately summarize an opponent's position and then explain your
objections. Twisting an opponent’s position is to craft a straw man out of your opponent's position and
then strike it down (known in rhetorical studies as the “straw man” fallacy). Theology is not academic
debate and our sources--like the assigned text for this class, Confessing the One Faith--are not
necessarily opponents. However, the same principle is at work. We want to be able to summarize a
theologian's position in terms and tone that they would find acceptable before we engage in judgment
(prescribing) about them.
Part of that attempt at objectivity is to be representative rather than selective in the use of sources. The
most accessible way to illustrate this is through the use of scripture. If I have a theological claim that I
wish to substantiate like, "salvation is God's gift to humanity without any work required on the part of
humanity." I can easily prooftext this claim with Ephesians 2:8-9. However, those two verses live within
the larger context at least of Ephesians 2, the book of Ephesians, and the Pauline corpus. The New
Testament contains multiple perspectives--Matthew (Matthean), Mark (Markan), Luke-Acts, the Pauline
Epistles (perhaps even separated between Pauline and deutero-Pauline), Johannine, Hebrews, Petrine,
James (Jacobian) and Jude. So, a more representative survey of the question of theology would survey
more than one of these witnesses and acknowledge that at least some witnesses in the New Testament
push against this claim that salvation does not require work. At minimum, I would need to account for
texts like Matthew 25:31-46 and James 2 in order to explain how I resolve the questions those texts.
The same principle applies as well to the way we operate with our tradition. For Disciples, we cannot
simply quote Alexander Campbell and say--he settled this question. Campbell and Stone did not agree
on much of anything other than that they belonged to the same church. Lipscomb disagreed with
Campbell and represents a significantly alternative voice. The movement is also larger than these three
dead white men. We would want to consider the fuller witness of the two hundred+ year history of the
Disciples of Christ. Obviously, we can't be exhaustive in our survey of every term or every issue.
However, the practice of identifying alternative perspectives by name and writing and wrestling with
how reasonable people might conclude differently is a key discipline of theological thinking. Also
believe it is a key principle of being church today