Thinking Theologically

One of my goals when entering seminary was to become more adept and consistent at what I call “thinking theologically.” By this I mean looking at the world with more attention to God's action in the world, and, more importantly perhaps, to orient my thinking on a day to day basis to try and be in line with a greater divine purpose. What I'm hoping to do is move from approaching questions, problems, and issues with a “strategic approach” (what is the most efficient way to solve this issue?) to using a theological approach (how would God call us to solve this issue?).

I had an “a ha” moment in my class on Anglicanism. We were discussing the Chicago-Lambeth Quadrilateral of 1886/1888. (For Episcopalians, check your BCP pages 876-888, for others, click here). In this effort towards ecumenicism, first the Episcopal Church and then the Anglican Communion tried to define what elements of Christian faith we considered essential or non-negotiable in inter-denominational dialog. We settled on four, essentially: 1. The centrality of the Old and New Testaments, 2. the Apostolic and Nicene Creeds, 3. Baptism and Eucharist, 4. the Historic Episcopate. It is the last one, the importance of having bishops considered to be in succession to the original apostles, that has often been one of the biggest sticking points in dialogs between Anglicans and churches that do not have bishops. Apparently, however, our intransigence on this point begins with Thomas Cranmer, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, who felt this was non-negotiable because bishops are actually in the New Testament (see 1 Timothy 3:1-2; Titus 1:7). They may not be in the Gospels, there may not be a line where Jesus says “You have to have bishops,” but he felt that the strong reference to bishops in the early church indicated that we really didn't have a choice in this matter, God wanted us to be organized this way.

Hearing that, I thought “a ha, he may not be 100% right, but at least that is an example of thinking theologically.” By this I mean that they didn't think strategically, which might lead you to say “you know, this bishop thing is getting in the way of the worthy goal of inter-faith dialog, let's dump it in the interest of moving things along,” they said “hey, how does God call us to be a church?” They then said, "hey, since we think the Bible is crucial to our understanding of what God calls us to be, we really can't blow off these texts that suggest that God's church includes bishops." Now, I can completely understand how other churches may have come do different understandings of how God has called them to be, understandings that don't include the Anglican fixation with the episcopate. I'm not saying that isn't a reasonable interpretation or even that I fully understand all the nuances of our own Anglican understanding of the theology of the episcopate. However, I did admire the way we approached the problem.