The Practicality of Theology
What we believe about God dynamically affects the way we relate to and interact with Him. This is most certainly true about our human relationships. If I believe (explicitly or implicitly, consciously or unconsciously) something about another person I will act and react accordingly regardless of whether or not it is actually true. My belief about that person no matter its level of truth, explicitness, or consciousness will dynamically affect my subjective experience of that person and can even alter my objective relationship to that person. How much more is this true of God?
Every statement of theology makes implicit statements about God and what He is like. Sometimes a disrupted view of God does not come from our explicit statements about God, but rather our unconscious understanding of him that is implied through other ideas we hold and have not worked out thoroughly.
For example, I may confess that God is loving, tender and kind. Yet I may also have an understanding of sin and God’s response to it (including hell) which leaves me with an implicit understanding that God is mean, vindictive and harsh. This implicit understanding of God will war against the explicit confessions resisting any kind of stability in our experience of God.
The significant point to note here is that beliefs about God that come implied in other beliefs that are not immediately about God can undermine our view of God that we specifically articulate. The difficulty here is that the ideas that are so damaging are often implicit, unconscious and unexpressed, hence eluding the dialogue, exploration and prayer that would move toward their resolution.
This demonstrates that in order to have a correct doctrine of God (that is, a correct view of Him), it is exceedingly necessary to work out numerous areas of theology and understand what these concepts imply about God. Theology is not simply a practice for those in “ivory towers.” Indeed, every believer is to some extent a “theologian” in that they have ultimate concern for the three-personned God and what those persons are like. For this reason, we must not shy away from exploring the various subjects of theology and wrestling with them afresh. On the under side of this struggle lies the exhilaration of discovering the beauty of God.
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The Spirit of the Resurrection Part 2: Gnosticism and Schizoid Spirituality »
