Though much of what you will read below is sharply worded, and perhaps even offensive to some, this is intentional. I offer these reflections in the hope of discussing these matters further with my colleagues in the Canadian Christian context. I would be more than happy to be proven wrong in any and all respects, but my observations are based on decades of pastoral ministry, theological education and now almost a decade of teaching at the undergraduate, graduate and post graduate level in systematic and historical theology.
Now, in no uncertain terms it is a fact of history that the study of formal systematic and historical theology, as legitimate scholarly and ecclesial disciplines, has been under suspicion and attack from without since the enlightenment. But within the church, generally speaking, there was still considerable support for these disciplines for a longer time and both were core to theological education in some universities and most seminaries through to late modern times. This was especially true of more conservative Protestant and all Catholic institutions. Even liberal Protestant institutions continued to teach such courses at the core of their programs, though greatly revised and redefined along enlightenment lines. The status of the subject of ‘Christian theology’ today, however, is that it continues to suffer as a result of external and internal criticism of its method, content and findings. It was only a matter of time before institutions would begin to marginalize, re-interpret and even eliminate theology from its core programs. It was also only a matter of time before the caustic criticisms of these disciplines would begin to affect the church’s attitude towards systematic and historical theology. When this situation is eventually combined with pluralistic, cultural and philosophical re-definitions of the disciplines and their methods, in our own time, the net result is a loss, for the church, the academy and the public, of the task of doctrinal description and re-description. In the current context, especially among Evangelicals, this loss has resulted in a Biblical, theological and historical ‘amnesia’, such that such Christian groups hardly know, and certainly cannot articulate, the main features of their faith any longer. There was a time when the MDiv degree of most seminaries, for instance, required a solid grasp of the development of doctrine and at least four courses in Systematic Theology, together with a course that introduced the student to the subject. Those days are long gone as seminaries across Canada stumble over each other to reduce the size and academic strength of their MDiv program in order to attract more, and less qualified, students. Of course, students now come into seminary and religious studies programs having received the negative press towards the study of doctrine and dogma, often embedded in their educational and ecclesial experience. Such students are also considerably less prepared to undertake the rigors of theological study and so demand that the content and depth of such courses be considerably curtailed. In some seminaries it is possible to avoid Systematic theology all together. In fact, it would appear that the only place where one can undertake the serious study of “dogmatics”, in terms of its development, status and meaning for our time, is in those universities and institutions that undertake the graduate academic study of the discipline. In short, the discipline of theology in the life of the church in Canada is in steep decline and dying fast.
So what if it is, and it does die? The church appears to be doing fine without it, and anyway, so goes the popular criticism, ‘theology only leads to discord and internal fighting’. Yet, for all of this, it is becoming increasingly clear that Christianity in Canada has suffered greatly from this theological dissonance.
First and foremost, Christianity has suffered, in its various Western permutations, from a loss of theological self-identity, spiritually speaking. The vague approach to theology has led to an equally vague understanding of the gospel, and finally to a vague sense of our spiritual identity and existence. ‘Spirituality’ can never again receive the specificity that theology traditionally afforded it, because this is not only politically incorrect, it is practically impossible due to a general ignorance of theological tradition. One only needs to compare some of the spiritual classics of Western Catholic and Protestant faiths to what passes for ‘spiritual literature’ in our own time to see how wide is the theological drift in spiritual identity today. Compare, for in stance, John Owen’s Sin and Temptation with contemporary works like Dallas Willard’s theologically lean, yet much celebrated, The Spirit of the Disciplines, which is largely an exercise in non-theologically descript generic “spirituality” concocted on the basis of a general theology of immanence.
Second, in the wake of this theological, biblical and historical amnesia, the word ‘theology’ has become increasingly meaningless as religionists, cultural historians, and philosophers have rushed to filled the void left by the loss of Christian theology. In the process it has stripped ‘theology’ of its Christian moorings in the West. Now everyone does ‘theology’ as an auxiliary discipline to whatever else they happen to be doing in the church, the academy or in public life. Theology does not define our existence, rather the reverse is more likely the case. Furthermore every ‘theology’ is legitimate because every experience is legitimate, regardless of its right or wrong headedness visa vie the historic Christian faith. To limit the definition of the word ‘theology’ to its primary Christian referent is, as we said above, politically incorrect and to broaden it is inevitable due to ignorance of the Christian tradition of theology, by and large. It is more helpful in maintaining our non-descript faith if we define the word theology as broadly as possible. It makes commitment to and communication of ‘faith’ in general, easier. In fact our ‘missional’ efforts must now be informed by a largely cultural, rather than specifically Christian, definition of theology.
Third, this situation has been perpetuated by pastors and church leaders who themselves lack a thorough knowledge of Christian theology and it tradition of development. They perpetuate all of the circumstances thus far enumerated. They continue, in their ignorance, to parrot the idea that theology is not core to the church’s task and indeed can be a hindrance. In fact, though it is controversial to say so, it is fair to say that there has been a catastrophic failure for theology in the church, on this level. I have personally been party to meetings where, despite my objections and contrary intuitions, leaders of denominations and institutions, without any real justification based on facts, make decisions for their constituencies that actually, and I think demonstrably, runs counter to the actual concerns of people in the pew. I have preached many sermons across Canada and have never had to apologize for making sure my sermons are grounded in a theological reality. Lay people, despite their relative ignorance of theology, still get its importance. Pastors and leaders do not. Or at least they willingly down play its significance.
Fourth, Preaching and liturgy used to be about rehearsing the great dogma of redemption in all its parts, but it too has suffered from being ill informed theologically. Here the pressure on pastors to work in areas anterior to their actual calling has had the effect of reducing their sermons and liturgical planning to pop psychology designed to get the average parishioner through week, as if eternity no longer mattered. They no longer feel it is needed to spend more time in the study or mapping out the theological contours of worship. Rather than trying to bring up the level of theological awareness of their congregations through creative preaching teaching and liturgy they deem it sufficient to stay just slightly ahead of their people on this level. Simplify, pragmatize and whatever else you do sooth their restless spirit. Do not stimulate the mind to think there might be more to the faith than you want them to think or hear. Mark Knoll’s book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind should be required reading for all such pastors and church leaders, evangelical and otherwise.
Finally, the near loss of the formal study of Christian theology in the church and academy has had a detrimental effect on the ability of the church to clearly articulate its faith on the public scene in today’s world. Granted, the mainstream media has become increasingly hostile to our efforts to clarify the nature of our faith, especially in the wake of current scandals within the churches, Catholic, Protestant and/or otherwise. But when the opportunity has arisen for us to articulate our faith, usually in response to some ethical or moral issue facing society, we often speak out of the narrow social-psychological concerns we share with human society rather than speak from the perspective of an informed theological perspective on creation. This is certainly the case with issues like abortion, euthanasia, global warming or other pet themes of the modern and postmodern west. Very often we merely reflect the larger cultural vagueness on these issues because we are not sufficiently connected with the larger theological vision that formerly gave us a clear voice on them.
So there you have it. The failure of theology in the church, academy and society leads to an ineffective and declining voice for Christianity in society as a whole. Gone are the days when it could be said that the church stood solidly for a theological reality that transcended all other concerns. Now we are merely engaged in the anthropologization of all religious reality in ever-increasing degrees. To paraphrase the famous critique of Christianity offered by Ludwig Feuebach, ‘the secret of theology in the postmodern context is that it is, after all, only anthropology”. Such a result should be expected when we trade a Christian theology of transcendence for a vague ‘theology’ of radical immanence.