IF YOU lived within the Middle Ages and wanted (and will afford) a devotional image, you’d ideally throw caution to the wind and commission not one painting, but two. A pair of carved ivory panels would just do as well. And, far likelier than not, you wouldn’t select two scenes at random, but two particular images: certainly one of Christ’s birth (or his conception) and certainly one of his death: a nativity (or annunciation) and a crucifixion. You had the entire faith in two scenes. Join them with a hinge, and you might fold them together to guard the pictures. We might think that this short-changes the resurrection (even though it is harder to depict than the crucifixion), but, as a pairing, it’s difficult to beat.
Christian theologians have tried something similar, wondering find out how to roll the entire breadth of the Christian faith into one idea or theme. We might consider the dying words of John Wesley: “The better of all is, God is with us!” Paul offers us something equally good in 1 Corinthians: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself.”
St Paul, we would think, was already saying two things; and lots are the theologians who might need warned us that attempting to distil all of it into one idea goes too far: only a pair of ideas will suffice. So, for example, St Augustine of Hippo got a good distance into expounding the religion through the dual ideas of Christ in the shape of God, and Christ in the shape of a servant (drawing on Philippians 2).
Among medieval theologians, St Thomas Aquinas gathered the religion under two headings: God as Trinity, and the humanity of Christ (or the Trinity and the incarnation, which John Calvin also endorsed, as “the sum of all doctrine”). Put one other way, we’ve all of theology represented within the two natures of Christ — human and divine; God and creature; the goal, and the technique to get there.
Karl Barth found those two natures woven into the entire creed: “God above man [in the Father] . . . God and man [in the Son] . . . God with man [in the Holy Spirit]”. But possibly even extending from one idea to 2 is just not enough. Henri de Lubac asked for 3 principles: “Incarnation, death, and resurrection: that’s, taking root; detachment; and transfiguration. No Christian spirituality is without this rhythm in triple time.”
Appealingly, I feel, John Calvin was such an enthusiast for theology that he would discover whatever he was discussing on the time because the centre or bulwark of the religion: “The most vital truth of all [is] that God governs the world by his windfall”; and yet “The resurrection of Christ is an important article of our faith”; and, at the identical time, “The first principle of theology . . . [is] that God can see nothing within the corrupt nature of man . . . to induce him to indicate his favour.”
For my part, I slightly like Barth’s cheerful suggestion (albeit made slightly in passing), that the entire of the gospel is there within the words of the creed, “I feel . . . within the forgiveness of sins”: “Forgiveness of sins!” he exclaimed. “As though every little thing weren’t said in that phrase!”
THERE are various reasons for wanting to precise the religion in a nutshell (or two, or three), starting from dividing your great work of theology into parts to confessing your faith in God along with your last breath. Sometimes, the thought has been to ascertain a safeguard, suggesting that some theological theme or other preserves the remainder, and that getting it improper leads all the remainder to wreck. The doctrine of justification by faith has served that purpose for some Lutheran theologians, becoming “the doctrine on which the Church stands or falls”.
Other Protestant make-or-break doctrines aren’t hard to seek out (Catholic theologians seem less inclined to think in this fashion). Herman Bavinck described God’s sovereignty because the “root principle” of his theology: the core, no less than, of all that made it distinctively Reformed.
The smartest thing to say, I feel, is that we will find the entire of theology present in any of its parts; and that it’s tremendous to position our emphasis on one part or one other when the occasion demands. The church yr encourages just that type of theme-by-theme attention. That is just not only a matter of 1 focus after one other, but in addition a chance, at each season, to approach the entire of the religion through that part: not only incarnation at Christmas, but every little thing in relation to it; not only the resurrection in Eastertide, but every little thing in relation to the resurrection; and so forth.
EVERY a part of Christian belief can properly be held to the sunshine in turn, and in each jewel we will see the entire refracted. That said, having picked up one theme, we do well eventually to maneuver on to a different. To change the metaphor, because the late John Webster put it, doctrines can wither or bulk up in an unwieldy way through too little exercise, or an excessive amount of: “It could be quite possible to start an account of Christian doctrine at any point, provided that proper attention is paid to systematic scope with a purpose to prevent the hypertrophy of 1 article at the worth of the atrophy of one other.”
Next yr, 2025, is the 1700th anniversary of the First Council of Nicaea, and with it the anniversary of the Nicene Creed, which it created. That is invitation to concentrate to the entire of the Christian faith — to every a part of that confession of religion — within the yr ahead: the familiar parts, and the less familiar; our favourite parts, and the parts which have yet to grab us quite as much.
If the doctrine of the Church is unexplored territory for you, there are some excellent books that supply a way in, resembling Eric Mascall’s Christ, the Christian, and the Church, or Christopher Cocksworth’s Holding Together. If the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is under-represented in your bookshelf, the sphere is well served by anthologies, for instance, The Holy Spirit by Eugene F. Rogers (Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), and one other set by Stanley M. Burgess.
THEOLOGIANS can get famously irate with each other, not least in relation to the order during which theology ought to be written or taught, to the purpose of some fairly undignified mud-slinging. Aquinas, for example — a robustly Trinitarian theologian — has been pilloried over the past century for starting his most monumental study of theology with God as One, as if that implied some lack of conviction concerning the Trinity. But why? The Trinity is — in spite of everything — concerning the unity of God, in addition to divine threefoldness (about which Aquinas also had some magnificent things to say). In recent years, Katherine Sonderegger has also begun her creative and widely admired systematic theology with a volume on God as one.
Where you begin is just not vitally vital, as long as you cover the entire of the religion in the long run. As Aidan Nichols puts it, the topics of the Christian faith are more like a circle than a line with a definite starting and end. You can join the circle at any point. It is more vital to get all the way in which round than to start out exactly here or there. “Properly systematic theology constitutes a circle where the coed may enter at any point on the circumference, but at the identical time must grow to be acquainted with every point on the circumference with a purpose to understand even his initial point of entry — regardless of the latter can have been.”
AS I see it, there may be a difference between where you begin from and what you begin with. “Starting from” is concerning the shape of your thought; “starting with” is about the way you explain or present it. You have to start out somewhere, and that may often be influenced by whom you’re addressing and why. There isn’t any reason to suppose that the entire of somebody’s thought relies on where they occur to start in some particular book, or sermon, or set of lectures.
Creeds and confessions of religion often begin with God the Father and the creation of the heavens and the earth. That is an inexpensive place to start out. You could also make case for starting with the resurrection and the experience of salvation, since that’s what kicked off the history of distinctively Christian theological rumination. (On salvation, Ellen Cherry suggests that it is just not a lot the idea of salvation which should order our doctrine because the accomplishment of salvation. The principle on which all theology is to be judged is whether or not it aids salvation: whether it’s “salutary”.) Calvin hedged his bets, writing that you might reasonably start theology either with God, or a theological understanding of the human being. He selected the previous in his Institutes, but allowed for the latter.
SO FAR, the image of a circle has suggested the cycle of 1 theological idea after one other, but it surely may also suggest the clustering of a hoop of doctrines about one which lies on the centre. If we’re taking that approach, the outstanding contender for the centre, historically speaking, is Jesus. We are, in spite of everything, called Christians, and we’re called that for a reason (even since a fateful day in Antioch, as narrated in Acts 11.26).
No one within the twentieth century made more of an effort to position Christ on the centre of theology than Barth. The “theological centre which comprehends and displays its manifold facets . . . is Jesus Christ”. As Barth saw it, Christ lies on the centre of the creeds for a reason. If we divide the creed into three portions, each around a divine person, then even in speaking “of God the Father, the Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth, we couldn’t avoid continually pointing to this centre. . . Indeed, the second article [about Jesus] does not only follow the primary, nor does it just precede the third; but it surely is the fountain of sunshine by which the opposite two are lit.”
Thinking about Jesus revolutionised Christian belief about God, giving us the doctrine of the Trinity. Jesus can be the one through whom all things were made. In the incarnation, and in his Passion and resurrection, he’s God with us, the Redeemer. Through him, the Spirit involves bear witness to him. The Church is Christ’s body, and salvation is nothing lower than incorporation into him. He is the Alpha and the Omega, and stands on the centre of the last things.
Barth wrote about “Starting with Jesus Christ and with him alone”. He described Christology as “the touchstone of all knowledge of God within the Christian sense, the touchstone of all theology. ‘Tell me the way it stands along with your Christology, and I shall inform you who you’re.’” If you desire to journey through the religion on this coming creed yr, you might hardly do higher than Barth’s Dogmatics in Outline. Another strong advice is Kathryn Tanner’s Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity: A temporary systematic theology.
HISTORIANS will tell us that controversies concerning the nature of Christ weren’t the primary order of business on the First Council of Nicaea; but there could be little question that an important decision that those bishops made — an important insight that that they had — was to admit Christ as equal to the Father in divinity: of the exact same substance or being.
When I used to be an undergraduate, a favorite theme for Christian Union evangelistic meetings was the query “Who is Jesus?” I expect it still is. That query, or the reply that’s given by the Church (most importantly by the First Council of Nicaea), has been asked, and asked again, but it surely cannot grow to be threadbare with use. It stays an important query in theology; the reply stays an important answer. It is why the creed of that Council is so vital. It is why so many individuals, all over the world, will meet on Christmas Eve, and on Christmas morning, to hail a baby as God incarnate.
The Revd Professor Andrew Davison is Regius Professor of Divinity within the University of Oxford and a Residentiary Canon of Christ Church, Oxford.
