HOW A SEMINARIAN OR ANYONE ELSE 
SHOULD APPROACH THEOLOGY
IF ONE HONESTLY HOPES TO
UNDERSTAND IT

©  2004 by Orchid Land Publications

[updated 20041002]

    One's training will affect how one deals with terminology, how one approaches the analysis of a topic, large or small, in theology . . . or any other subject that rises above the less-than-human level of how one feels about a given matter.   There will be a great deal of great difficulty for a list mentality to discuss something with a system mind, and of course conversely.  
       To exemplify:  Joe's approach is to ask whether cháris means something ontological (e.g. an energy) or something psychological or juridical (e.g. God's attitude) or whether pístis means belief or some attitude like "confidence" or "loyalty" in the original Greek New Testament?  One can run from one dictionary to another; one says X, one says Y, most say X or Y.  That is truly a fruitless (and of course non-explanatory) approach.    
    A more realistic approach is to ask WHY one of the foregoing terms has one meaning for Ms. X and another for Mr. Y--or, more pointedly, why such and such a word HAS GOT TO MEAN this or that for Mr/s Jones.  The answer is to be found in the (more often than not unconscious) axioms or premises of different peoples' thought worlds or orientations.  Honest people have to ask such a question, since a list or catechism of beliefs is for retarded children's minds.  But most children can understand cause and effect:  "if . . . then . . ." statements.  Even in literature, which isn't very scientific, one tries to explain why the writing is such as it is.  (Of course, the hermenutic school of literature or the so-called hermeneutic paradigm of theology will explain things subjectively--how one feels--rather than with objective data.)
    The two approaches are as different as salt and sugar.  
    It is essential for an adult mind (with however many attractive childlike features) to grasp the nature of a system.  Dealing with lists will never (so far as I can imagine) reveal much or account for much of anything.   If you begin with assumptions and see how they play out, your questions will have more relevance.  Justin’s apologetic against Trypho admirably shows how many beliefs can be derived from a single assumption--that YHWH and Jesus Christ One and the Same.  That is how one should proceed, in my opinion.  One can argue that "You cannot/are obliged to say this if you hold that" or "If you hold X, then a lot of little x’s (details) follow from it."  Details are vital, but if one doesn’t rise above them to their systematic interconnectedness, how meaningful can any detail be?  Those who think that a fact is a fact may be deluding themselves, since their latent assumptions determine what the details mean.
     To determine WHY a person prefers X to Y when both meanings are found in a dictionary is FAR MORE IMPORTANT in understanding the matter than just resorting to ever more dictionaries (which are simply lists of data, mildly organized).  
    Christians don’t differ much over facts--that John 6:54 says such and such in Greek or in Phlp. 2:13 (in a given manuscript).  Differences are due to the meanings and interpretations determined by the presuppositions of our thought worlds, whether acknowledged or not.  If you begin with the idea that matter cannot convey spiritual Energy, then Mysteries (sacraments) are not possible, and the Incarnation and Resurrection, being ontological, are not part of the doctrine of Salvation.  If you hold that time is irrelevant, then tradition won't appeal to you.  If you assume that God cannot be three and one in the SAME respect (say, in the singularity or plurality of Essences and of Persons), then the Trinity is impossible.  
      To avoid being the victim of one's unconscious presuppositions it is MOST IMPORTANT to distinguish between asking whether a given interpretation is true and asking whether it could have been held by the Apostles.  The former is a variant of de gustibus non disputandum est--a relativism in which one cannot argue one's point of view by basing it on an assumption or axiom that another person does not accept.  This follows from the consideration that an axiom is neither true nor false, but what rather determines whether some detail is true or cannot be true.  The latter question, what one can find evidence for in the thinking of Greek-speakers during the Apostolic Age, offers no such leeway:  It's a matter of factual truth.  One is free to say that one holds X to be true and ~X to be false because of some premise or axiom that one accepts; one is not free to say that such a paradigm (set of a few axioms) could or could not have existed in the Apostolic Age among speakers of Greek UNLESS one has credible evidence that it did--a matter of historical truth that cannot be done by guessing.
     A word about relativism:   That the meanings of details are imposed by assumed axioms or assumptions doesn't mean that the axioms or assumptions cannot be argued for or against.  One can offer evidence that conflicts with an assumption; but it is willed and hence, not true or false.   One thing should be clear:  Christian theological premises that first came to light in the thirteenth century (the beginning of the High Middle Ages following on the heel of seven centuries of illiterate and barbaric Dark Ages in Western Christianity) or at the beginning of the fifteenth century (after the Renaissance had begun) could hardly have existed among the Apostolic speakers of Greek or have been embraced by any thinker in the social millieu in which the Apostles lived and worked.  Honesty requires accepting this.

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