Treasures New and Old

Matthew 13:52

He said to them, “Therefore every teacher of the law who has become a disciple in the kingdom of heaven is like the owner of a house who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old.”

Perhaps the most dangerous fetish in modern theology is the idea that theology evolves toward a more and more exact and true understanding of God and the gospel. In realty contemporary theologians have no more data to work on, no more intelligence to work with, and no more  gifting of the spirit to inspire than their predecessors. Certainly they can avoid the pitfalls and build on the insights of their predecessors. But can they assert that they actually know more about God?

It seems unlikely. There is knowledge that is cumulative to be sure. Science offers a good example. Steady investigation of the natural world yields more and more information on which scientists can work, while constant experimentation manipulating both ideas and substances provides new frameworks within which the natural world can be understood. And the results in terms of changing our social and physical environments are obvious. 

This cumulative effect simply doesn’t appear to happen when it comes to orthodox Christian theology. Except within groups that claim continual new revelations standards of ethical behavior never exceed those found in the teaching of Jesus. Nor do insights into God’s nature exceed those present in the teaching of scripture. Indeed Christian theologians are anxious to demonstrate their conformity with apostolic teaching either as found solely in scripture or as solidified in scripture and the canonical creeds. 

You could scarcely find an entire course in Newtonian gravitational theory in a modern university. although perhaps a few paragraphs in an introductory text. But courses in the ancient theologians, collectively and individually, are central to training pastors and theologians.

I don’t say this to disrespect theologians, but to locate the doing of theology in its proper context. Which is context. New theology doesn’t arise because we somehow have new revelations into the nature of God. It arises because new cultural and social contexts demand theological innovation so that we can re-appropriate what we already know for the mission of the church. 

In this respect theologians are like scientists, but not in the sense of making new discoveries about God. Rather in the sense that scientists are constantly reaching into their own past, and particularly into the past of mathematics, to find tools and insights that allow them to better frame current discoveries. 

For scientists new information through experimentation constantly demands new theories; new frameworks to account for all the relationships between known facts. So, for example, a 19th century mathematical oddity called symmetry becomes the 20th century center of the standard model of particle physics.

The leaders of the church are in a very similar position. As they observe their cultural context as it changes they find that the theological theories that once worked well become inadequate. And like scientists they need to seek treasures both new and old. 

There are two dangers. The more dangerous, quite evident, is that theologians will mistake current theological expressions for eternal verities. An example is claims within the UMC to represent “orthodoxy” or “what the church has always and everywhere believed” with what are in fact post-enlightenment, contemporary English language reiterations of ancient creeds and customs. As if somehow the readers could be cast back into a pre-modern worldview out of which to read them. 

It is admirable to seek to think “with the church through the ages,” but it is a dangerous fallacy to believe one can think “like a church” whose mind was and is shaped by constantly shifting cultural contexts. A 21st century Christian can no more reiterate the mind of the apostles than the costumed character in faux armor at a Renaissance Faire can reiterate the mind of medieval knight.  And in any case what scripture speaks of is the renewal of the mind, not its preservation. 

The second danger is that theologians will mistake the need for insight into new contexts with a demand for theological novelty. An example is contemporary UMC progressives who believe they can simply shove Augustine and Aquinas overboard, ditch unattractive theories of the atonement, and embrace whatever sounds reasonable in the contemporary social consciousness or social sciences as theological truth. 

The treasure chest of tradition holds within it wisdom which, while not necessarily relevant to particular individuals and cultures of the moment, may well hold the key to faithfully and meaningfully articulating the gospel for others in another place and time. Progress isn’t illusory, but unless you have a theology of progressive revelation and are able to identify with certainty the emerging revelatory moments the claim to know more about God’s love than the apostles, or for that matter earlier generations of theologians, is dubious.

And unnecessary. What we know that they didn’t know isn’t more about God’s love. What we know is more about the current context in which that love must be both manifest and proclaimed. What we know is more about how God is incarnate, is manifest in our culture, than those from earlier times and other cultures could possibly know. Simply because they didn’t know our culture. 

What this requires of Christian leaders is a regular attention to both contemporary culture with its framing of the human situation and the treasure chest of tradition within which we may well find the wisdom to address the human situation with the gospel has already been formulated. What we must learn to never do is dismiss either the new or the old we find within.

And when we disagree we could recognize that our disagreements lie at the intersection of a shared desire to manifest and proclaim the gospel and different understandings of the contemporary culture in which we are called to work. Instead of attacking one another’s treasures we would do better to appreciate one another’s differing insights.