Tag Archives: Keith Johnson

Theology as Discipleship 4

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In the sixth chapter Johnson argues that the “mind of Christ” and the pattern of Christ’s humble obedience go together. On this basis, then, a Spirit-filled life of humble, self-sacrificial love is a defining mark of a theologian who shares the mind of Christ. The theologian pursues knowledge rightly when they do so for the sake of others, out of a desire to serve them by pointing them to God and sharing his love with them (148). Johnson’s emphasis is on the pursuit of theological knowledge, for our finitude and fallenness mean that we cannot, in and of ourselves, gain the knowledge of God. Rather, this knowledge comes to us only as a gift of grace. Thus the theologian “must proceed under the assumption that we are not free to determine how our discipline operates. Our knowledge of God does not result from an act of our will, as if we can know God simply because we want to do so” (151).

In a certain sense the act of seeking is itself the goal of our work, because this act produces the exact kind of intellectual and moral formation God desires us to have. Put differently: the practice of theology should be ordered around the goal of seeking God rather than finding him precisely because the act of seeking is what forms us to adopt the humble way of life that corresponds to the mind of Christ (152).

Theology, then, is as much a matter of prayer—of communication with God—as it is about gaining new insights and information. That is, “we are theologians who live on our knees before God, with an open Bible in front of us and the voice of the church in our ears” (155). Johnson unpacks this picture of faithful theological work in his final chapter in which he sets forth nine practices of those who practice theology as disciples:

  • They measure their thinking and speaking about God by the person and work of Christ as revealed in Scripture.
  • Their thinking stays within the limits of faith in Jesus Christ; that is, they resist reductionist attempts to remove all mystery, erase all doubt, or answer every doctrinal question in an all-encompassing system.
  • They endeavour to live obediently in the pattern of the incarnate Christ’s obedience to God.
  • They engage in their theological work for the benefit of others.
  • They use their theological work to serve the church and its mission.
  • They pursue both truth and unity.
  • They practice their discipline with confidence while avoiding defensiveness.
  • They utilise the insights of the non-theological disciplines to enrich their own thought.
  • Finally, they pursue their work with joy, for their work is an act of worship that anticipates the worship they will offer to God into eternity.

Theology as Discipleship 3

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In chapters four and five Johnson turns his attention to scripture, providing a functional account of biblical authority. Because God elects his witnesses and identifies with their words—as Christ does with his own witnesses in the New Testament—and because God continues to use scripture as a medium of revelation, it is authoritative. Through these words the ancient witness and the contemporary hearers are linked in the one story and activity of the gracious God.

God’s movement of grace in the past, and the biblical authors’ obedient response to it, reverberates here and now as God uses the authors’ past actions to produce our faith and obedience in the present. In this way, Scripture itself ties God’s various saving acts together to form a single story, a unified history of God’s grace and our response to it (93).

Despite this beginning, Johnson’s description of biblical authority quickly passes over to an ontological and christological account. Scripture is inspired by God—breathed out by God as God’s own very speech, and as such is God’s Word in human words. Even more specifically, Jesus Christ is this inspiring God, who thus stands at the centre of scripture and is therefore, the criterion of all biblical interpretation. Theology, therefore, is learning to think in accord with “the mind of Christ,” illuminated by the Spirit and guided by the scripture.

Scripture’s purpose is not to help us fit God into our lives but to see how our lives fit into what God is doing in history through Christ and the Spirit. Rather than trying to insert Scripture into our reality by figuring out how we might apply it to our lives, our task is to reinterpret our lives and the whole of reality in the light of Scripture (106).

An implication of this view is that interpretation of scripture is not a free-floating, ad hoc, or reader-centred enterprise. Christians and theologians alike are to learn to speak of God appropriately by being inducted into communities and practices of interpretation, and participating with the community of faith in the present activity of God. Thus Johnson identifies three key interpretive principles. First is what he calls the Augustinian principle: all true biblical interpretation will lead to deeper love of God and neighbour. That is, interpretation is measured by outcome rather than by content alone. Biblical interpretation is itself oriented toward discipleship. Second is the ecclesial principle: we read and listen with others, including the tradition of the church. Believers continue to give their attention to (a) the message of Christ, (b) that of the apostles, and (c) the present work of the Spirit. In fact, Johnson suggests that interpreters start with the present work of the living Lord and Spirit as an exercise in hearing, following and participating now in the life and work of God. This, he suggests, is theology as discipleship. But both poles of this interpretive scheme are necessary. Unless we give our attention to the message we are in danger of drifting. Yet the present work of the Spirit also opens the possibility of new and surprising interpretations that we might never otherwise have noticed. This leads finally, to the third christological principle which insists on interpreting all scripture in the light of Jesus Christ as the criterion of interpretation.

Scripture, then, is central to the work and practice of theology. It is the chief creaturely means through which God speaks (110).

Our calling is to help the church think and speak about God correctly so the church can partner with Christ in God’s saving plan for history, and we interpret the biblical text in light of this calling. Our primary goal is not to extract isolated doctrinal truths from the text and then use them as the building blocks of a theological system. Our goal is to help the church interpret Scripture faithfully so that the church can follow Christ as the Spirit leads. This means we interpret each passage in light of how Christ and the Spirit are prompting us to live in relation to God and neighbor right now … We engage in this task knowing the text will be interpreted properly only in light of the living Christ. …Our proper response is to read it with humility, openness and the expectation that God might surprise us (129, original emphasis).

Theology as Discipleship 2

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In chapters two and three Johnson develops his understanding of the nature of Christian life as a participation in and partnership with Christ. The practice of theology takes place within the context of, and as an aspect of, one’s discipleship. Johnson narrates the biblical story of God’s saving work in history culminating in Jesus Christ as the true reality that frames our existence. As such, theology begins “from above,” from the narrative depiction of Jesus Christ as the revelation of God. All reality and history can be truly understood only with reference to Jesus Christ—and never the reverse. Theology cannot start from below as though to fit the idea of God into a preconceived understanding of reality. God’s eternal will and purpose was to create all things in and for Christ, and to reconcile them by him. In the Holy Spirit believers are united to Christ and so given a share of—a participation in—his eternal life and knowledge of the Father. This knowledge which although partial is true, is the ground of theology. Johnson adopts a clear image to indicate the true though partial nature of our knowledge of God:

Participating in Christ is not the same thing as being Christ. He knows God by nature because he is God by nature; we know God as finite and temporal creatures who have been given a share in Christ’s mind by grace. In this sense, we are much like a passenger who gets picked up by a train halfway through the train’s journey. On the one hand, the passenger truly participates in the train’s journey and has accurate knowledge of both the train and its movement toward its destination. On the other hand, the passenger’s knowledge is “only in part” because she has participated in only part of the journey: the train and its journey long preceded her participation in it, and she has not yet arrived at the destination and has no knowledge of it (58, original emphasis).

Our union with Christ is for the purpose of partnership with Christ in his work. The pattern of this partnership is God’s own being and work; God intends that we live in correspondence with him. Thus God gives commands that, as we obey them, help us to live in likeness to him. And God acts, empowering our own responsive action. Sin is the refusal to live in correspondence to God, choosing to become “like God” in our own way.

In union with Christ believers are made hidden participants in the eternal life of God, and by the Spirit Christ begins to live his life in and through us. Jesus has joined his life to ours, and has incorporated his people into his life, so that his history has become our history. His faithful obedience liberates us to be also faithful and obedient in him, corresponding in our own life to his life. The work of theology is one particular aspect of this overarching partnership. This work involves helping the church use human words to speak appropriately of God. This requires bringing human language about God into conformity with Christ, who is in himself the revelation of God and as such, the criterion of all speech about God. “Our thinking and speaking about God will be true if our words correspond to who Christ is, what he has done and what he continues to do within created history. This means that our primary task as theologians is to bring the meaning of the words we use for God into conformity to Christ” (81).

Theology as Discipleship 1

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Keith Johnson’s Theology as Discipleship arose from his work in the classroom in which students sometimes asked concerning the value and relevance of theological study. His response is to “argue that the discipline of theology and a life of discipleship to Jesus Christ are integrally related because the practice of theology is one of the ways we participate in the life of the triune God” (12). His argument unfolds over seven chapters, beginning in the first with a historical narrative to explain how Christian theology became separated from Christian faith and the life of the church and discipleship; that is, it became subject to canons of thought and presuppositions alien to its own confession. In the early centuries of Christianity the context of theology was the church, and its practice was related to pastoral and devotional concerns, and faithful life in the world. The presupposed connection between theology and discipleship began slowly to change, however, during the medieval period when the discipline of theology became part of the university curriculum. This change accelerated in the modern era as the role of the university and what counted as academic learning evolved.

Theologians felt pressure to justify their conclusions according to the academic criteria that governed the university. This meant that rather than starting with faith—which might distort their ability to assess evidence rationally—they had to begin with universally accepted premises and employ the methods of critical reason. No longer could they appeal to the authority of the Bible or the church’s tradition to defend their claims (29).

This pressure intensified as modernity progressed, and Johnson notes a further shift that occurred with Schleiermacher, who argued that theologians should “demonstrate that the church’s practices are a ‘necessary element for the development of the human spirit,’” and that they should employ a genuinely deliberative character in their work (30, citing Schleiermacher, Brief Outline of Theology as a Field of Study, 10-11, 97). Theologians must now be scholars in addition to saints, and their work was not simply for the church but for the welfare of the modern state, and so they were accountable not only to the church but also to the university. The best theologians had always engaged other disciplines, seeking to draw them into the intellectual framework of Christian faith. Now the direction of engagement shifted: “Theologians interacted with these same disciplines not in order to reframe them in light of their faith but to secure theology’s place in the academy alongside every other discipline” (31).

Formerly, theologians had pursued theological training in order to acquire knowledge, habits and skills that would shape them into the pattern of Jesus Christ for the sake of their service to the church. … Now, with the discipline of theology housed primarily in the university, the primary goal of theological education was to provide students with the technical skills they needed to perform responsible critical enquiry so that the church’s faith and practice could be brought in line with the standards of critical reason (31-32).

Thus Johnson proposes that theology begin with its own distinctive confession—the lordship of Jesus Christ according to Romans 10:9—and work itself out from there in accordance with its own rationality and in dialogue with other disciplines. In Johnson’s view theology must be both faithful and academic; to require a division between these is to misunderstand the nature and practice of theological inquiry. The remainder of the book is his attempt to view the discipline in this light.