Theological Systems as a Human Construct

Was Paul a ‘Calvinist’?

Does Acts teach a ‘Dispensational’ understanding of Israel?

Did the Apostolic Church see communion as ‘Consubstantiation’?

In truth, whatever we may think of the above theologies, the sort answer is no, and therein lies the problem. Each of these examples faces the same dilemma. There was no Calvinism, Dispensationalism, Lutheranism, New Perspective, or a host of other theological positions and systems at that time.

Now on the surface this is an exceedingly obvious statement, to the point of absurdity, but it has some rather important implications. If these theological systems were not technically the position of the Scripture’s authors (to say nothing of how Biblical they may or may not be) than what are they? In short, they are human constructs. They are mindsets, worldviews, and theological frameworks which are an attempt by later Christian thinkers to explain what the Scriptures teach.

As such we can not expect the Spirit inspired Scriptures to consistently conform to these man made systems. One may be able to make the case that a specific system (say Calvinism) does quite well in conveying what the Bible teaches, but that does not mean that Calvinism is always correct, or that we are ever justified in our all too frequent attempts to force ‘problem passages’ into our systems. The very fact that there are problem passages for every system is not a shortcoming of the Bible but a reflection of the incomplete imperfect nature of all of these systems.

This is by no means to say that all systems are equal (they are certainly not), or that we should just give up on all of these frameworks because none of them do full justice to the Scriptures. We all approach the Scriptures with a mental framework, and we ought to have the best one we can, but we also need to be aware enough of this issue to critique our own framework as well as others. Studying Calvinism, Dispensationalism etc is not a waste of time or besides the point, they affect how we read the Scriptures so we ought to debate them and their alternatives, and if we come to the conclusion that the Scriptures and our framework do not match (as I did with Dispensationalism) than we must be willing to drop our framework rather than falsely force the Scriptures to fit it.

So, if indeed our theological systems are human constructs, we need to be willing to hold them with a much more open hand. Not to cling tightly to our specific tradition and condemn all others ridiculously unbiblical, but to critically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of our tradition, and be willing to fairly do the same to others with an openness to learning from them as you would want them to from your tradition.
A little less condescension about small differences among Christians who share so much would do us all a world of good.

I suppose that where I am going here leans in the direction of ‘post-conservatism’, which is fair enough though I would say I fall a lot closer to certain authors in that movement than others. Especially influential for me has been Kevin Vanhoozer (everyone interested in doing theology well should read his “The Drama of Doctrine”) but other authors ranging from Stanley Grenz, to John Franke, to Roger Olson have made similar proposals. Again, this is a framework which is man made, but I think that especially Vanhoozer’s proposals for how we should approach hermeneutics and our reading of Scripture are healthy, well thought out, and very grounded Scripturally.

That aside, for how influential certain systems seem to be in the Evangelical community, I think we need to rethink how committed to them we should be. And instead of presupposing one system has a corner on truth, to allow all our frameworks to be challenged by others and especially by a radically honest reading of the Word.