In what belongs to the deeper meanings of nature and her mediation between us and God, the appearances of nature are the truths of nature, far deeper than any scientific discoveries in and concerning them. The show of things is that for which God cares most, for their show is the face of far deeper things than they… It is through their show, not through their analysis, that we enter into their deepest truths. What they say to the childlike soul is the truest thing to be gathered of them. To know a primrose is a higher thing than to know all the botany of it–just as to know Christ is an infinitely higher thing than to know all theology, all that is said about his person, or babbled about His work. The body of man does not exist for the sake of its hidden secrets; its hidden secrets exist for the sake of its outside–for the face and the form in which dwells revelation: its outside is the deepest of it. So nature as well exists primarily for her face, her look, her appeals to the heart and the imagination, her simple service to human need, and not for the secrets to be discovered in her and turned to man’s further use.

~George MacDonald, Nature #150

• 
  George MacDonald
  Author: C. S. Lewis

Much of my theological investigations right now seem to be arriving at an undoing of everything that is commonly known as gnosticism. What gnosticism is and why it is so dangerous is surprisingly difficult to pin down.

A recent lecture I took in suggested that gnosticism at its core was merely an assertion of having “special knowledge”, and the danger is then in having a special feeling of superiority in having this “special knowledge”… this could be called intellectual pride. This can be a difficult thing to grapple with if you are not seven years old and you think critically about anything.

To be sure, Jesus dropped a lot of deep theology in his parables, sermons, example, and life. But I am starting to appreciate the amazing quality of “face value” in all that He did and said.

The Greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven

1At that time the disciples came to Jesus and asked, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”

2He called a little child and had him stand among them. 3And he said: “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.

5″And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me. 6But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

7″Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come! 8If your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire. 9And if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.

~Matthew 18:1-7

Theological inquiry has sent me spiraling down endless rabbit holes of intellectual pursuit that are very difficult to navigate peacefully, Christians have generated a lot of ideas to wade through in the past two thousand years.

I have also been discovering to what extent our current approach of organizing all this theological inquiry is a modern Greek endeavor. Plato may have been the first systematic theologian by which all subsequent Christian theologians seeking a systematic unification of truth are students of. That is not necessarily a bad thing… it’s just very likely to be the reality of our current theological efforts for good or for ill.

Philosophy serves a very important purpose in the life of a modern human in much the same way as science does. To imagine living our lives without philosophical inquiry and classification would be like trying to pretend that we don’t know how toasters work… well there are some really fancy toasters out there that do boggle one’s mind. But anyway, its foolishness to pretend we can go back… but perhaps it is still necessary to know from where we came in order to appreciate where we are…

I do believe there are many theologians who grasped this irony and often times would preface their work with such an admission.

My lectures at the University of Basel are on ‘Systematic Theology’. In Basel and elsewhere the juxtaposition of this noun and this adjective is based on a tradition which is quite recent and highly problematic.

Is not the term ‘Systematic Theology’ as paradoxical as a ‘wooden iron’? One day this conception will disappear just as suddenly as it has come into being. Nevertheless, even if I allow myself to be called and to be a ‘Professor of Systematic Theology’, I could never write a book under this title, as my great contemporary and colleague Tillich has done!

A ’system’ is an edifice of thought, constructed on certain fundamental conceptions which are selected in accordance with a certain philosophy by a method which corresponds to these conceptions. Theology cannot be carried on in confinement or under the pressure of such a construction.

The subject of theology is the history of the communion of God with man and of man with God. This history is proclaimed, in ancient times and today, in the Old and New Testaments. The message of the Christian Church has its origin and its contents in this history. The subject of theology is, in this sense the ‘Word of God’.

Theology is a science and a teaching which feels itself responsible to the living command of this specific subject and to nothing else in heaven or on earth, in the choice of its methods, its questions and answers, its concepts and language, its goals and limitations.

Theology is a free science because it is based on and determined by the kingly freedom of the word of God; for that very reason it can never be ‘Systematic Theology’.

~Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline

• 
  Dogmatics in Outline (SCM Classics)
  Author: Karl

Perhaps if a few more of the professors at the now infamous Bible department of my Alma mater could have taken their work with this type of candor they could have side stepped the explosion of uncharitable events that took place around the debate of ‘Truth and Certainty‘.

To be sure, many mistakes were made in handling the conversations and decisions made by the college leadership… but that is just another faulty system, like them all…

Categories: George MacDonald, Karl Barth, Nature, Cedarville, Books, Philosophy, Theology
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