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Looking for a Unifying Principle

A theologian’s task is developing a theology around a unifying theme that is descriptive of the entire theological enterprise and permeates all its parts. This is not unique to theology, but is required of particular philosophies and with most every other scholarly discipline. Without a discoverable unity any system disintegrates and becomes inaccessible to those attempting to come to terms with it. Before going any further, we can say that Dr. Jack Kilcrease is a theologian in every sense of the word. In the current state of theological affairs, no one idea or principle comes close to providing an umbrella under which what theologians do can be placed. In former days systematic theologians, who were simply known as theologians without further description of their special interest, pursued their tasks around traditional and widely held and known principles. Such was the case in the Reformation and post-Reformation era, when particular theologies, that later formed basis for the mainline denominations, arose and could be identified by one or two prominent themes. Each church tradition had a principle making it distinct from others and by which each one recognized itself as unique. One could not be confused with another. Lutheran theology was not Reformed and vice versa and so it was. The unifying principle of each tradition permeated every article of the faith and provided unity to the theological system. Lutherans saw justification as the core principle that surfaced in such doctrines as the sacraments and the ministry which existed for the sake of declaring the sinner righteous. So accepting the law’s condemnation, they heard and believed the gospel and were relieved from the impending judgment of God and the fear it created. Reformed, Presbyterians, Congregationalist, and other groups rooted in the teachings of Ulirch Zwingli and John Calvin saw the center of theology in divine sovereignty, a doctrine that played itself out in what they said about the covenant as a contract between God and the believer that dare not be broken, providence and election. Methodism, not strictly a Reformation era phenomenon, was an eighteenth century reaction to Reformed doctrine of election and saw the impetus for salvation not in God’s sovereignty but in the will of each human being, a precursor of the rationalism of the Enlightenment. Later holiness groups and today much of American Evangelicalism follows in what is commonly called the Arminian tradition enveloped in Methodism. Before the Reformation, Catholicism was a covering for various theological approaches, but the Council of Trent in reaction to the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith insisted that works had a place alongside of faith. Some of these works that contributed to one’s salvation were specifically religious ones like doing penance, making pilgrimages, and participating in the Mass. In resolving theological differences, the bishop of Rome had the last word. Around these doctrines Roman Catholicism took shape. For Protestant heirs of the Reformation the scriptures exercised this role, but the sola scriptura principle as it came to be known, multiplied differences and did not provide the hope from principle of unity. This would have to be found elsewhere.

The survival of classical principles that determined the faith of the churches emerging from the Reformation are heading towards extinction in identifying what mainline denominations confessed. Their confessions or more properly statements of what they believed have been gradually disintegrated by a centrifugal diffusion that has emptied the core of these older theological traditions. Some Lutherans and the Reformed remain steeped in their Reformation heritages and continue to be at odds with each other, just as Luther and Zwingli were, on such essential issues as God, the person and work of Christ, and the sacraments, but they are in an ever decreasing minority. Dr. Kilcrease reassesses these differences and finds that they are still valid in how Lutherans and Reformed differ from each other. Interest in historical differences does not consume the interest of theologians in the mainline churches, who are willing to let bygones be bygones. Similarly those who sit in the pews are unlikely to know or be concerned about the distinctive beliefs of their churches and how these churches came to believe what they do. Identifying a principle holding the church and its beliefs together is no longer a concern and in many, perhaps most, cases impossible. This has opened the door to an endless round of ecumenical alliances with each church selling its birthright. The ecumenical movement in bringing together churches that were historically opposed to each other is like a tire that has gradually lost air and has gone flat. Into this situation syncretism has found an entrance. A Shinto altar can be found in a prominent New York City cathedral and sacred symbols of non-Christian religions often adorn the walls of Christian sanctuaries. An annual Reformation Day celebration once served the purpose of saying that one’s church was really different from those of others. This is less important today. Religious diffusion and diversity of principles are exacerbated by the rise and proliferation of churches that claim no denominational affiliation. More conservative churches may go under the banner of Bible churches and make a point of not being bound to one set of beliefs, life confessions, or official statements of any kind. Only the Bible demands their allegiance, so they say. On the other side of the ledger, community churches may not even make believing in the Bible a requirement. Membership is open to all those who reside in geographical proximity to their houses of worship. Both types of churches agree that the members can believe what they want. Locating a central theological core holding together these free standing congregations together is impossible, simply because there is none. What is believed in one year may not be believed in the next year and its members are not required to subscribe to any article of faith. Adherence to the Apostles’ Creed is off limits even to Evangelicals who are committed to the Bible’s inspiration and more likely to be open about their faith. They account for a good segment of the Protestant population. Congregations in mainline denominations with roots in the Reformation may not be able to identify the core of their belief. Allegiance to statements of faith is more a formality than theologically determinative. These churches have no constitutional-like documents to be referenced in cases of dispute.

Another factor in the disintegration of theological cores in churches and their theologies is the division of study of theology into the sub-disciplines of biblical, systematic, historical and practical theologies. There is hardly a seminary, if any at all, that does not have its faculty divided into departments for each of these subdisciplines. A seminary or a university school of religion instructor is less likely to see him/herself as a theologian competent to handle the full range of theology. So one professor is a systematic theologian, another a biblical scholar, still another an historian and finally the practical theologian teaches how to get things done, a feature attractive to the American mind. Each of these specialties can be further fragmented. One is not simply a New Testament scholar, but a specialist in the Pauline epistles, the gospels, or even just one gospel. Rarely does a scholar at a seminary or in a college’s department of religion see him/herself as competent to participate in the full entire range of the theological curriculum. Rarely is one professor accredited to more than one department. Each one is a specialist in one of the subdisciplines and finds kindred spirits not in his church tradition but in the scholarly guild of his expertise. Faculty specializations are mirrored in curriculums. A course of study is never simply theology, but biblical, systematic, historical, or practical theology. Deeper fragmentation is found in nondenominational and freestanding seminaries where the professors represent different and contradictory traditions and confessions. Even denominational owned or controlled colleges and seminaries engage professors from theological traditions other than their own. Commitment to the beliefs of the church supporting the school is not required of the faculty. In this virtually universally segmented theological environment, students in the seminary and those undertaking a general study of theology of religion are often left to themselves to provide or identify a unifying principle from among the various options presented to them. Pastors coming out of any of these environments, even those with deep Reformation era roots, are more likely to see themselves as preachers and practitioners of religion equipping their congregations to do ministry. They see themselves as professionals and do not see themselves as theologians prepared to teach even a minimum of the faith contained in the creeds that in spite of the diversity in Western Christianity since the Reformation has remained a unifying factor in offering a common Christian faith. A church’s historical traditions are no longer a factor to what the pastor preaches and how he interacts with his parishioners. This segmenting of theology in mainline church seminaries is accelerated by removing the study of religion from church controlled and supported colleges and universities and giving it to state colleges and schools with self-perpetuating boards of regents each accountable only to itself. In these instances historic positions of the churches formulated in the Reformation and post-Reformation eras are no longer factors in the theological enterprise. Theological studies have seen further fractionalization by the special interests of each scholar with the result that theology and religion faculties of seminaries and universities have come to accept the wide diversity of views existing among themselves and they make no attempt to articulate a unified understanding of a common theological task and goal. Diversity is not new. After the Reformation the classical forms of Lutheranism, Calvinism, and Catholicism were represented in German theological faculties, as they still are, and a general type of Protestantism once prevailed in most American colleges and universities. Today throughout the Western world Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism have been given a place at the table where only the classical Christian view could once be found. One only has to go to the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature to encounter these continuously multiplying possibilities of what presents itself as theology. For the sake of clarity, when the study of non-Christian options is placed on an equal plane with Christian ones, it would be better to speak of these scholarly endeavors as religious studies and thus reserving and restricting the word theology for the study of Christianity. In this definition of theology as a Christian enterprise, Kilcrease more than qualifies as a theologian.

Kilcrease does not see his task in proposing a unifying principle into the religious marketplace where ever newer options are continually being offered. Rather he sets forth for himself the task of locating a unifying principle for Christian theology. In The Self-Donation of God: A Contemporary Lutheran Approach to Christ and Benefits, he proposes that this unifying principle is Christology, specifically in the person of Jesus as prophesied in the Old Testament as the Christ and realized in the New. By providing a revelation of himself in the biblical narrative, God gives of himself and makes a commitment to its hearers. Revelation is a self-giving of God reflecting what he is in himself. As the title indicates Kilcrease is unabashedly Lutheran and thus not surprisingly he sees justification as the core doctrine; however, he expands his understanding of justification to include Christology as a prior, necessary, and fundamental corollary to justification. Strictly speaking, Christology is the chief doctrine and serves as the unifying principle of the entire biblical narrative from Genesis though Revelation. He writes from within the perspective of historic, confessional Lutheran theology, but he goes beyond setting forth the views of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Lutheran Orthodox and first offers a thoroughly biblical theology. Where required, he takes issue with the Lutheran fathers, but is convinced that they understood Christology as a unifying principle of the scriptures around which they developed their own theologies. A confessional theology that attempts to be at the same time biblical and confessional is caught between the Charybdis in being limited to long held historical positions that seemingly are not open to adjustment and the Scylla of biblical theological proposals that is practiced without confessional restrictions and cannot propose for itself definite goals. To the outside observer biblical studies can appear without purpose and so are more likely to create skepticism rather than engender faith. Let’s put it another way. If some biblical studies are open ended with no prior intention of coming to once and for all conclusions, denominational studies begin and end with predetermined conclusions. Theological studies of the historic Reformation churches, including the Roman Catholicism ones, come to predictable outcomes. Methods of biblical studies are so varied, that with their multiple and varied conclusions, they are rarely, if ever, in agreement with one another. For Kilcrease Christology is the lodestone that allows biblical theology to be presented in the service of historical, confessional Lutheran theology and so he presents a principle that provides order to the theological task and a governing principle to biblical studies. Christology drawn from the biblical narrative is the unifying principle for the entire task of theology and so theological and confessional studies constitute one discipline.

Kilcrease sees the divine narrative as it holds the history of salvation together. Adam distances himself from the word by which he was created. He and his wife owe their creation and continued existence to God’s gracious word, but Eve is not content to accept God’s gracious offer and speculates about this word. By so doing this, she seeks to acquire divinity for herself and her husband and so nullifies the first narrative. To salvage the situation God offers himself in the history of redemption that then constitutes the content of the biblical narrative. Adam’s role as prophet, priest, and king is inherited by Israel and comes to a climax in Jesus who is twice anointed, first in taking upon himself and the fulfilling the Old Testament offices of prophet, priest, and king, and more profoundly in being God’s Son through the hypostatic union. God’s self-giving of himself in the Old Testament in the glory residing in the tabernacle advances to the presence of the glory found in Jesus who as God’s final temple replaces the one in Jerusalem. All of the New Testament shows Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old Testament, but each gospel and epistle does it in its own way. Rather than seeing Christ’s atoning work as something in addition to the Old Testament, Kilcrease locates it in the Genesis creation narrative. Humanity’s rejection of God as the giver of all good things leaves each human being in the predicament of having to rely on him/herself. In spite of its alienation from God, humanity continues to receive good things from God but does not recognize him as the giver. Since the old narrative that brought forth creation was rejected, God sets in place a new narrative, one of redemption; that is, the narrative of the new creation. Placed alongside of the old narrative that man rejected and brought death is the new narrative that was first given to Israel and then could be found completely in Jesus. Throughout the new narrative God is the speaker and the content. Jesus is assumed into the old narrative in which God’s promise was transformed into condemnation. By being assumed into the old, Jesus transforms it into a new narrative promising salvation. In believing in this narrative the believer is not only justified, but is included in the narrative itself and receives Christ’s righteousness. In the last chapters Kilcrease discusses Christology along traditional dogmatical lines that defined Lutheran theology from the Reformed kind. Mary’s role in Christology is presented and contemporary understandings of her are analyzed for their acceptability. Kilcrease readdresses Reformed and Lutheran differences over the person and work of Christ, showing that the Lutheran understandings are the right ones. Not at issue is the genus idiomaticum between the two major Protestant traditions in assigning divine attributes to Christ’s divine nature and the human ones to his human nature. Remaining in contention is whether all of Christ’s actions can be assigned to the total person, so that the man Jesus can be regarded and worshiped as the world’s creator, a doctrine to which the Reformed take strong exception. Also in contention is the genus majestaticum, the Lutheran belief that the human nature shares in all of the divine attributes. Since Christ is not two persons, but one divine person, the human nature is anhypostasis, that is, the man Jesus does not have a separate personality. This doctrine takes on meaning in the face of the critical biblical studies in their quests for the historical Jesus that ignore his claims to deity. Christ’s full possession of who and what God is including his righteousness does not allow for either the Catholic and or the Reformed concepts of grace as a substance that can be quantitatively distributed. In hearing and listening to the narrative, believers are given all of what Christ is and has done. Grace, like justification, is declared. Kilcrease understands the role of Jesus as prophet, priest, and king as reflecting God’s Trinitarian existence, an item not previously found in theology.

Since Christian theology is Christology, ideally any Christian dogmatics, especially one that offers itself as Lutheran, also should be thoroughly christological. In engaging Catholic and especially Reformed dogmatics, and adopting their outlines, Lutheran dogmatics has tended to deviate from their christological content and goal. Kilcrease works to overcome christological deficits in theology by presenting a truly biblical theology that is thoroughly christological. This is rarely done. He has done it and in so doing set a standard in showing how biblical and systematical theology should be one theology—Christology.

David P. Scaer

Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology

Concordia Theological Seminary

Fort Wayne, Indiana