Interpretive Theology

I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with the word theology, mainly rooted in the cumbersome baggage associated with the label. As I’ve delved into Scripture over the last forty-plus years, I have become acutely aware of the vast amount of mystery found in the book(s). In my feeble attempt to understand the ambiguity, I’ve become a collector of theological interpretations. And as many seminary students can attest, there are plenty of options to choose from.

As I see it, this smorgasbord of theological interpretations is the reality in which today’s professional or armchair theologian must cautiously wade. We’re offered charts and camps, creeds and commentaries—many of them helpful, many of them inherited, and many of them exhausted from centuries of defending themselves against each other.

It’s rather surprising to witness the vigor with which each theological camp defends its planted doctrinal flags. This need to justify propositional truth, sometimes to the death, seems a bit overplayed. When did theology move from polite conversations about God to something much more divisive? Or am I naive to think the nature of theology, in our Christian tradition, was ever a civil discourse?

In truth, the early church never really had theological agreement. The New Testament began not as a codified system but as the memory of an encounter—eyewitness experiences of Jesus that were told and retold in homes, on roads, within worshipping communities. These oral accounts were eventually written down, not as systematic theology, but as biography, exhortation, lament, and pastoral correspondence. They evolved through use—copied, circulated, amended, and then surrounded by other writings: letters from apostles, early liturgical hymns, poems of resistance and hope.

The twenty-seven books that now constitute the New Testament weren’t formally affirmed as canon until the Councils of Hippo and Carthage in 393 and 397 CE, and even then, the process was hardly tidy. There were disagreements, omissions, and contested inclusions. The canon was born more out of necessity than consensus, a pastoral need to clarify what was approved to be taught.

As for theological discourse that followed, well, we’ve been arguing ever since.

Dogma, Doctrine, and Theology

Over time, the church constructed categories to frame its conversation: dogma, doctrine, and theology. These became something like scaffolding, not always visible, but quietly shaping the space in which faith is held and practiced.

Dogma, we might say, is the foundation. These are the affirmations the church has historically deemed essential: the divinity of Christ, the resurrection, and the triune nature of God. Without these, the structure begins to collapse. Doctrine is the framing, the interpretive structures built upon that foundation, think Catholic versus Protestant vs Reformed vs Orthodox, teaching that vary between traditions, which tend to evolve in response to time, culture, and regional makeup. Theology, then, is the lived experience of the house itself. It is how the Doctrines are arranged, explained, and specifically taught. Theology is supposed to be practical and applicable. Together, these form the dynamic, relational process by which we live in the world.

Succinctly, Dogma remains relatively stable. Doctrines multiply and morph. And theology takes on as many shapes as the people who practice it.

Which brings us to the question: how do we move forward in such a landscape? How do we speak of God without reducing God to a position? How do we hold theological discourse with care, knowing that we each arrive with a different inherited belief system?

One suggestion comes from Bruce Demarest and Gordon Lewis in their work, Integrative Theology. In this reference book, they don't necessarily defend a single stream of thought; they map the diversity of interpretation across the major doctrines of Scripture, creating space for comparative reflection.1

Not to achieve consensus, but clarity.

This kind of integrative or interpretive theology allows for a slower, more deliberate conversation. Maybe you land in one place. Maybe you shift over time. Maybe you step outside the structure entirely, only to one day step back in.

Which reminds me of something I heard in graduate school, "You either leave Seminary a Fundamentalist or as an Agnostic." Meant half in jest, but with more truth than intended. For when theology is reduced to an argument about systems and doctrines, it can lose the very God it seeks to describe.

Movement of the Spirit

Let's take a step back to before the New Testament was formed, before the Apostles wrote down any of the eyewitness accounts, and before the Christian label was attached to any one person. Pentecost was a gathering of scared, scarred, and insecure followers of Christ. They were unsure of what they had seen, what they had heard, and what they had lived. So they gathered to pray and strategize next steps.

At this point, they would be known as Jewish, Jews who were beginning to emulate their rabbi, expanding out of their known Jewish roots into something more incarnate.

Pentecost wasn't planned. It wasn't a seminar or symposium on how to talk about their experience. It was more chaotic than that, more unplanned, more of a reaction to the Spirit's indwelling upon them. When the wind rushed, fire anointed their heads, they became possessed, protelotizing this New Way to everyone they met, using languages they did not know. They left a revelation in the small upper room to have encounters with unbelievers, to share their Rabbi's story. Again, it wasn't dogma or doctrine they shared but the first form of theology, words about God, that led them to action.

The word, logos, became flesh. They learned to incarnate or live out their beliefs from Jesus' birth, life, death, resurrection, reappearances, and ascension.

And while this collection of essays may vacillate between doctrines and challenge dogma, I want you to think about it as more my own words about God. My attempt at reasoning with the text, the eyewitness accounts, the Pauline opinions, and the teachings of my youth.

You might find, as you read these essays, that I push on your fundamental ideals, challenge your eschatological stances, and flirt too readily with relativism.

And you'd be right. I am, by all accounts, one of those who, upon graduation, slowly found myself aligned to the mystery of things, what you might call a hopeful agnostic. Who has, through his education and experience, opinions that you might not agree with, but as I reminded you already, I'm interested in theology. Even though I might assert some truths to make a point, I will certainly squirm if you try and pin these words to my chest. And though I don't believe in God or the Trinity, I certainly see the benefit in behaving as though they do exist.

Important Opinions

Fundamentalism

A theological polarization—I am right, you are wrong—and in extreme cases, I am righteous and you are not, so be gone with you (quite literally). The fundamentalist uses their interpretation of Truth as a weapon of condemnation, which justifies their posture of hate toward the unrepentant sinner, or even those with more moderate views than their own.

The philosopher Alvin Plantinga once quipped that a fundamentalist is:

“the stupid sumbitch whose theological opinions are considerably to the right of mine.”2

A quote I use often when discussing my relationship to the fundamentalist position. Humor softens it, but the sting remains. This form of theology rarely produces humility, only hierarchy.

Eschatology

Western Christians are too worried about where this life goes. The obsession with the end times, tribulation timelines, and rapture-readiness has produced an ecclesiology focused on escape rather than engagement. Sadly, eschatology dictates our ecclesiology. So, one who holds to a dispensationalist agenda will evangelize with a megaphone on the street corner rather than over a cup of coffee at the corner café, and would rarely be seen engaging with sinners, unless they are yelling at them.

I think it's important to note that the Gospels seem more concerned with thy kingdom come, or spread like yeast in flour, or "grow as a mustard seed, rather than making like a tree, and leaving.

Relativism

I do my thing, you do yours… quite in line with Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,3 in which truth is subjective and God is not absolute. Mainly a postmodern problem, truth is relative, which then triggers the fundamentalist into heated debates on absolute truth, or moves the foundationalist into logical dialogue on your justification of this relativistic belief.

Interestingly, though I am agnostic, I am not a Relativist; that is, I don't assert your truth is the right one. I'm much more interested in where your truth leads you and how your truth navigates the pains of this world. Does it become a self-serving truth or an altruistic one? Does it lead you to despair or to hope?

Examples:

The irony is that all three positions—Fundamentalism, Eschatological escapism, and Relativism—are reacting to each other. They are not neutral frameworks. They are bruised, defensive postures against one another, often rooted in fear rather than in faith.

So, where do we go from here? Toward a better system, perhaps. But I would rather move toward a hopeful imagination, one shaped by story, fellowship, and the slow work of the Spirit. That is the terrain these essays seek to explore.

Sources:

  1. Demarest, Bruce A., and Gordon Russell Lewis. Integrative Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: Academie, 1987. 80. 
  2. Plantinga, Albert. Warranted Christian Belief. Oxford University Press, 2000. 245.
  3. Smith, Christian, and Denton, Melinda. Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2005. 164.

Moralistic Therapeutic Deism is a belief system characterized by five core tenets:

  1. A God exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.
  2. God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.
  3. The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.
  4. God is not particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.
  5. Good people go to heaven when they die.