We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.
The Ultimate Criteria for Theology
Theology is thinking (logos) about God (theos). It is a good and necessary discipline, but only so long as it is centered on Christ. All of our speculation and debate about such things as God’s character, power, and glory must be done with our focus on Jesus Christ—more specifically, on the decisive act by which he reveals God and redeems humanity, his death on the cross.
The definitive thing to be said about God’s character is found here: God dies for sinners on a God-forsaken cross.
The definitive thing to be said about God’s power is found here: God allows himself to be crucified on a cross for sinners.
The definitive thing to be said about God’s glory is found here: God dies a horrifying, God-forsaken death upon the cross.
God’s character, power and glory are decisively revealed on the cross. Though it is “foolishness” to the natural mind, the cross is the power and wisdom of God to all who believe (1 Cor 1:18f). If we entertain concepts of God’s character, power, and glory that are inconsistent with what is revealed here, our thoughts are outside of Jesus Christ. Every thought about God, every mental picture we entertain about God, every single emotion that is “raised up against the knowledge of God” must be taken “captive to obey Christ” (2 Cor 10:5).
The true God revealed in Jesus Christ is not at all what the natural mind would expect—it is “foolishness”—for our natural expectations are influenced by our experiences in a fallen world that is permeated with the foundational lie of the serpent. We create a god of our own designs by magnifying our own fallen conceptions of character, power, and glory. Consequently, sometimes God’s character, power, and glory are presented in ways that don’t even resemble Jesus Christ, even within the Christian tradition. For instance, we often project onto the screen of heaven a cosmic Caesar, controlling the world through coercive power and intimidation rather than accepting God’s definition of himself in the crucified Jesus Christ. Such mental chimeras may inspire fear, but they do not transform us to become outrageous lovers.
The only hope we have of getting out of this fallen condition and walking in the ecstatic love of the triune God is to resolve that God’s revelation in Christ is true, however much it may contradict our fallen, worldly expectations. When the deceptive veil over our mind is removed and we see the glory of God shining in the face of Jesus Christ and when we fix our eyes on Jesus, we find a picture of God that could not possibly be more loving and beautiful. For here we find God going to the greatest extreme possible—suffering a God-forsaken, hellish death at the hands of the very creatures for whom he was dying! This is the greatest expression of love imaginable, and it alone reveals the truth about who the eternal, triune God is. God is this kind of love.
This is the ultimate criteria for all theology. Any other estimation of God will block not only our ability to think rightly about God, but also to love like God loves.
—Adapted from Repenting of Religion, pages 132-133
Image by brownpau via Flickr
Category: General
Tags: Cruciform Theology, God's Character, God's Love, Theology
Topics: Theological Method
Related Reading
A Cross-Centered Evaluation of Responses to Tragedy
I’d like to pick up where I left off on my previous post about Draper’s article entitled “Aurora shooting inspires various perspectives on God and belief.” Toward the end of his article, Draper reports on an informal survey conducted by Stephen Prothero on his CNN Blog. Prothero simply asks people to respond to the question: “Where…
The Twist that Reframes the Whole Story
Many people read the Bible as if everything written within it is equally authoritative. As a result, people read it along the lines of a cookbook. Like a recipe, the meaning and authority of a passage aren’t much affected by where the passage is located within the overall book. The truth, however, is that the…
What Does Spiritual Warfare Have To Do with the Cross?
Last week, we covered a few posts on the nature of the Atonement and the Christus Victor view. The following continues this theme, specifically looking the motif of spiritual warfare and how it relates to Christ’s work on the cross. This is an adaptation from Greg’s article in The Nature of the Atonement: Four Views. …
Theology Matters
DugDownDeep_Carnahan.mov from Covenant Life Church on Vimeo. We found this fun video over at David D. Flowers’ blog and loved it so much we wanted to share it with you here. Thanks David!
To What Extent is the Old Testament a Sufficient Revelation of God? (podcast)
Greg considers the relationship between the testaments. Episode 548 http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0548.mp3
God’s Heart to Prevent Judgment
In Ezekiel we read a passage that depicts Yahweh as warning his people about their impending punishment by saying, “I will pour out my wrath on you and breathe out my fiery anger against you” (Ezek 21:31a). As we find in several other texts, Yahweh is here depicted as a ferocious fire-breathing dragon—a portrait that…