Introduction to Theology

 

Introduction to Theology

Justification, and destination. The power of its existence is the power focused through those statements we have made about God’s Word, God’s witnesses, and God’s people.

            We will carefully refrain from speaking of a power presupposed either by us, in our theological assertions about the place of theology, or by theology itself in the form of any further theological statements. All would be betrayed, all would be false if we were to speak in this way. Theology cannot lift itself, as it were, by its own boot straps, to the level of God; it cannot presuppose anything at all concerning the foundation, authorization, and destination of its statements. It can presuppose no help or buttress from the outside and just as little from within. If Theology wished to provide a presupposition for its statements, it would mean that it sought to make them, itself, and its work safe from any attack, risk or jeopardy. It would presume that it could and must secure them (even if this presupposition was a tour de force, a Deus ex machina introduced in the form of a further theological statement). Precisely in this way theology would sell its birthright for a mess of pottage. Theology can only do its work. It cannot, however, seek to secure its operation. Its work can be well done only when all presuppositions are renounced which would secure it from without or within.

            What can be arbitrarily presuppose, obviously stands at one’s disposal. Were theology to presuppose the power sustaining its statements and itself (in the manner mathematics presupposes the axioms supporting its theorems), then theology would assume power in its own right, superior to that first and fundamental power. Theology could then muster that power for its self protection or at least place it on guard duty. The true power, which is powerful in its own right, defies being a potency which theology can posses and manipulate in its statements. Such presumed potency would be something like Munchausen trying to the pull himself out of the bog by his own hair. In one way or another the very thing theological seeks (because in fact it needs it) would be lost whenever theology attempted to rely upon such an arbitrary presupposition.

            We have to speak, therefore, of the real power that is hidden in theological assertions hidden, unattainable, unavailable not only to the environment but also to the very theology which serves the community. This the power present and active in what the affirmations of theology declare, in the history of salvation and revelation, in the hearing and speech of the biblical witnesses, in the being and act of the community summoned by them, and also in the work of theology when it testifies to these things. But this power is also totally superior to theology itself. It sustains and activates that whole even from the history of Immanuel down to the little tale in whose telling theology also, finally and at the last, has its existence and activity. In the telling of this tale, that hidden power prevents and forbids the slightest attempt to construct treacherous presuppositions. Most of all, it excludes the presumption that theology can vindicate itself. That power makes all arbitrary presupposing superhaoas, since it is a productive power which replaces all safeguards stemming from other sources. It is power that produces security, of course but just because its power is creative and sufficient to produce security, it is so effective that even the greatest theological master cannot, as it were, play with  it as though it were one of his chessmen. It is not endowed with a potentiality which theologian knows and can exploit, as though he could overlook its origin, significance, and limits, The theologian does not have it in his control. This power by no means a further theological assumption which he, much like a magician, could employ or not employ. So Enjoy Your life With God.