Scot McKnight: A gospel-shaped theology

Here Scot McKnight aptly says what I have been trying to say in my teaching.

"Pick up your standard textbook-ish systematic theology and you are most likely to get an exhaustive study of a one topic after another. The order of those topics matters immensely, and it just so happens that many theologians write theologies that are shaped by salvation (soteriology). Thus, the God, Man/Sin, Christ, Salvation, Spirit and Eschatology, often prefaced with Scripture, is essentially an ordering of topics through the doctrine of salvation.

Dig a bit further and you will learn in many of these books that “salvation” means the same thing as “gospel” so that a theology of salvation is a theology of the gospel. Which it isn’t, and the order of the above topics proves my point. They are salvation-shaped and not gospel-shaped, else they’d have other topics more prominent.

What we are most in need of is a thoroughgoing sketch of theology through the lens of gospel. Those topics above would come up but they would be framed within the orbit of other ideas.

Questions: How gospel-shaped is your theology? What questions would you ask to see if a theology is gospel-shaped? What are the major indicators of a gospel-shaped theology?

I see two questions that can be asked and those questions will indicate gospel-shaped: How central of a role does Israel’s Story/history play in the theology? How central is the resurrection? Everyone will have the Cross, but does the theology have resurrection as a central theme? Everyone will have christology, but does being Messiah and Lord make its way to the front? "

Click here for Scot McKnight's post (from which the above citation can be found).

Everyday Theology (edited by Kevin Vanhoozer)

I just bought Everyday Theology: How to Read Cultural Texts and Interpret Trends, edited by Kevin J Vanhoozer. Here are two interesting quotes on page 8.

If theology is the ministry of the Word to the world, it follows that theologians must know something about the world to which they are ministering. What should have been common sense, however, has for various reasons been something of a blind spot, at least until the advent of postmodernity. Indeed, one way of viewing postmodernity is as a "turn to culture." Postmoderns have criticized modern myths about universality precisely because postmoderns have a keen sense of our situatedness in race, gender, class, history, tradition—and culture.

Christian missionaries have always been aware of the need to engage culture. Yet only recently has it been suggested that the West has become a mission field. Lesslie Newbigin points out that the West presents a special challenge to Christian missions, for this is the first time the church has had to mount a mission to a culture that was previously Christian. How does one evangelize cultures that have already received the gospel only to revise or to reject it? For these and other reasons, Christian colleges and seminaries are increasingly coming to see that the study of culture is part and parcel of the prospective minister's theological training.

A book about classical theism, open theism, etc

(Sorry that this post may be too 'theological' for some. It's because of the nature of the book.)

From Michael Bird's blog I found someone's interview with Kevin Vanhoozer about his book Remythologizing Theology: Divine Action, Passion and Authorship (Cambridge University Press, 2010).

The book sounds interesting. Here are some quotes from Vanhoozer in the interview.

At this point in our time and culture, modern science has pretty much co-opted the language of causality. Consequently, even theologians who should know better sometimes speak of God’s causality as if it were on the same level as other creaturely causes. This is not how Thomas Aquinas, Calvin, or others in the tradition would have understood it. Nevertheless, open theists and panentheists have used this confusion to their advantage to attack classical theism. How, they wonder, can God be in a genuine loving relationship with creatures if he causes all things, including the motions of people’s hearts? Further, if God causes all things, must he not be responsible for evil as well as good? (emphasis added)

I use the term “communicate” in a very broad sense, not merely in the sense “to transmit information,” but “to make common” or “share.” The most important thing that God communicates is himself: his light (truth), life (energy), and love (relationship). Whereas the end of causation is coercion, the end of communication is communion. The category of communicative action opens up new possibilities for theism and adheres more closely to the categories of Scripture itself.

The question of God’s suffering – that is, his ability to be affected by human creatures – is a red thread that runs throughout the book. If Nicholas Wolterstorff is right in comparing classical theism to a seamless garment where one loose thread spells the unraveling of the whole, then divine impassibility makes for an excellent case study.

Remytholgizing Theology is a minority opposition report on the “new orthodoxy” of divine suffering. While I want to take the biblical depictions of God’s dialogical interaction with human beings seriously, I don’t want to pull God down to the creaturely level. The challenge, then, is to specify to what the biblical descriptions of God’s emotions actually refer. There is not much on the meaning of divine emotions in the history of theology. Classical theists tend to take this language as anthropomorphic; open theists tend to take it literally. I had to resist the temptation simply to choose one side rather than the other. (emphasis added)

Click here for the interview.