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The Engaging the Doctrine Series

Having written four volumes of my Engaging the Doctrine series, with more to come (God willing), it seems appropriate to offer a brief explanation of what this coordinated set of books aims to accomplish. Put simply, I am attempting to write something of a “dogmatics.” Yet this term, as applied to my Engaging the Doctrine series, may need to be kept in scare quotes. The term “dogmatics,” of course, conjures up the great achievements of past theologians who organized and presented synthetically the entirety of Christian doctrine.

The fact that I cannot claim to be in their company has always been clear to me but has recently been brought home still more clearly by reading the nineteenth-century Catholic theologian Matthias Joseph Scheeben’s introduction to his multi-volume dogmatics. Let me describe it briefly here. Scheeben announces his plan “to give, in a compact, strictly scientific form, a presentation of the entire content of dogmatic theology that is as complete and thorough, clear and synoptic as possible, so as to offer to everyone interested in a solid, rich, and living knowledge of divine truth a resource.”1 Scheeben goes on to say that the pages of his dogmatics will “reproduce as completely as possible the entire doctrinal substance of Catholic dogma in the development given to it by the Church’s theology,” including issues that “are of particular importance for the Christian life or for the circumstances of our time.”2 In addition to this material content (taking up doctrine speculatively but also in its historical development), Scheeben intends that his dogmatics will formally display “a truly organic arrangement and a strictly scientific development of the doctrinal matter, so that precisely this thorough insight into the connection of the individual doctrines with the key ideas and the highest principles might convey the clear and orderly knowledge of the individual topic.”3

In addition, while Scheeben wants to show how the Church’s doctrines arise from Scripture and Tradition, he does not want to “isolate the individual theses as much as readily occurs with the Scholastic method.”4 Instead of moving from thesis to thesis, he wants to “weave them into a whole in a continuous presentation”; and at the same time he wishes fully to incorporate the Scholastic method’s “precision in formulating theses, definitions, and arguments.”5 He seeks to combine “the controversial or polemical task of dogmatics” with the declarative, positive, and speculative tasks.6 While including “metaphysics and speculation” of the highest order, his dogmatics also aims to be fruitful “for spiritual meditation” and to ensure that “the word of God appears as a word full of spirit and life.”7

Scheeben has already said a lot in the above, but there is more! In his view, every dogmatics should occupy itself with proving that Scripture and Tradition contain the dogmas of the Church and also with understanding these dogmas “in their nature and correlation, in their cause and effects,” and in all the ways that they can be developed.8 Thus, he separates dogmatics from practical disciplines such as moral theology, ascetic theology, mystical theology, and pastoral theology, and also from historical disciplines such as biblical exegesis, history of doctrine, history of the liturgy, history of the Councils, and history of the saints. The results of the historical disciplines, he argues optimistically, “should serve to prove or to clarify dogmas” and should be informed by the conclusions of dogmatics.9 He notes that the practical disciplines will partly “be treated in dogmatics itself,” given that “God’s supernatural activity in the kingdom of grace is so intimately intertwined with man’s moral activity that without consideration of the latter it cannot be depicted at all.”10

Scheeben clearly knew what he was doing in approaching his dogmatics. By contrast, I have stumbled into my more modest and limited task. Even so, in my fashion, I too seek to offer a relatively comprehensive “dogmatics.”11 The present book, Engaging the Doctrine of Marriage, builds upon the three previous volumes of the series: Engaging the Doctrine of Revelation (2014), Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (2016), and Engaging the Doctrine of Creation (2017).12 I envision these dogmatic volumes as an ordered series.

In the first three volumes, my argument broadly runs as follows. The Trinity has revealed himself through the missions of the Son and Spirit, and this divine revelation is faithfully mediated to us through Scripture and Tradition and in a preeminently liturgical context. In the face of diverse controversies, and enriched by liturgical and theological contemplation, the Church enters more deeply into the apostolic deposit of faith and teaches authoritatively on matters that previously had not been fully understood: this is what is meant by “development of doctrine,” and under the guidance of the Holy Spirit a rupture—i.e. the Church’s rejection of a definitively taught truth of faith—is not possible (volume 1).

At the source of Christian faith is the holy Trinity, three divine Persons who are one God. I suggest that theologians should articulate the mystery of the Trinity by beginning with the Holy Spirit, without neglecting the Father (who will be at the center of my final volume, on eschatology) and the Son (who will be at the center of my volume on the mysteries of Jesus Christ). Debates over the Spirit expose the fundamental fault lines in post-Nicene Trinitarian theology: the inner-Trinitarian taxis, the relevance of the analogy from the interior processions of the mind, and the filioque. While I hold that the filioque is true and is an important part of illuminating the mystery of the Trinity, I do not thereby think that the Orthodox have abandoned Trinitarian faith (by no means!) since the affirmations sought in the formulation of the filioque can be affirmed in other ways. The relationship of the Spirit to the incarnate Word and to the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church is examined in the same theological movement. After treating pneumatological Christology and ecclesiology (including the life of grace and virtue), I focus upon the unity and holiness of the Church because it seems to me that these two aspects are most contested today, given the prima facie evidence that Christians are profoundly divided and that the Church evinces grave moral corruption (volume 2).

Turning to the doctrine of creation, I begin anew with the triune God. I argue first that the freedom of the Trinity to create is not impeded by the eternity of the divine ideas—namely, by the fact that the eternal God knows what he creates in the Word. Nor is the divine simplicity imperiled by God’s free creative act, because even through the divine will to create is free, it is not a different act from the simple, eternal divine Act. After treating the image of God and the innumerable controversies surrounding how to identify it properly, I turn to the vast profusion of creatures over time and space. Given that the human imago is central, why should God create dinosaurs, black holes, and the like? I argue that this is what we should expect from the infinite ways in which the Trinity can be participated in finite modes. God loves to express his infinite being through the unfathomable riches of the cosmos. At the same time, the cosmos is not eternal and so all creatures, and the cosmos itself, are subject to decay and deficiencies: the cosmos cannot be mistaken for God. Given the rapid rise in human population, I address the view that the Earth now has too many people. I argue further that evolutionary theory does not render otiose the doctrine of the fall of the first human “images” of God. As I show, there is no need to abandon the doctrines of either creation or fall due to the valuable insights of modern science. Lastly, I suggest that the doctrine of creation should instruct us in our reflection upon why God sent his Son to die upon a cross. Creation is a profoundly relational order, and sin (preeminently original sin) wounds this relational order and establishes humans in a state of injustice in which they owe the punishment of death, a punishment that is intrinsic to turning away from the Life-giver. Christ redeems the world by freely bearing this penalty of death out of supreme love for each and every sinner (volume 3).

The present volume, then, continues the trajectory of the first three volumes by arguing that the purpose of creation is the marriage of God and his people. Creation is properly understood in the light of its goal. Marriage has a crucial signifying role in the economy of creation and redemption. I explore the eschatological marriage of the triune God and his people and also the ways in which Christian sacramental marriage even now “is a great mystery . . . in reference to Christ and the Church” (Eph 5:32).

Like Scheeben, I believe that the central source of Catholic theology is Scripture as mediated in Tradition, with a central role for the Fathers and the medieval schoolmen (above all Thomas Aquinas, for various reasons). As Scheeben did, I also engage a wide range of more recent theologians who have contributed in important ways to dogmatic conversations. In my view, Catholic dogmatics now also needs to include the following elements: a fairly extensive engagement with historical-critical biblical exegesis; ecumenical exchange for the purpose of mutual enrichment and critique; and engagements with the natural sciences and the social sciences where they touch upon doctrinal realities. Appreciation for the insights of the great mystical theologians needs also to be present.

While the unfolding of the volumes should follow a defensible rationale, I consider it appropriate to address related topics without waiting for those topics to appear in the dogmatic order of the volumes. For example, I included in Engaging the Doctrine of Revelation a discussion of the Trinitarian missions as the fount of divine revelation. That book also contains discussions of liturgy and ordained priesthood as components of the mediation of divine revelation, although I expect to treat the liturgy and the sacrament of holy order much more fully in later volumes. Likewise, Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit is largely devoted to Trinitarian theology with a focus on the Holy Spirit, but I also explored aspects of Christology, ecclesiology, and the moral life. Again, Engaging the Doctrine of Creation treated not only creation, but also central aspects of the doctrine of God, as well as original sin and Christ’s cross viewed in light of problems that arise from within the doctrine of creation. The present volume on the doctrine of marriage reengages two issues treated in Engaging the Doctrine of Creation: the image of God and original sin, now explored from the angle of marriage.

In each volume, I make clear that the contemporary context plays a role in framing the engagement I undertake. Engaging the Doctrine of Revelation responds in part to the resurgence of liberal Catholic theology. Engaging the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit responds in part to contemporary anti-Augustinian movements in Trinitarian theology and ecclesiology. Engaging the Doctrine of Creation responds in part to the “new atheists” who attack the Christian doctrines of creation and fall; in addition, I have in view the environmental movement. In the present book on the doctrine of marriage, my task consists partly in responding to current misunderstandings or explicit rejections (not least among Catholics) of the requisite elements of Christian marriage.

One final note: in all the Engaging the Doctrine volumes, chapters may read like extended surveys of other people’s writings. I choose a few particular authors to engage and spend a large amount of space summarizing their work. It may seem that my own voice gets a bit lost. However, there is a method to this approach. In classical dialogues, the opposing viewpoints were presented through the voices of advocates of the distinct positions; and in the work of my teacher Thomas Aquinas, quotations abound. By means of careful selection of texts to explore in each of the chapters, I seek to convey the basic alternatives in the doctrinal debates I am engaging. I strive to develop both the positions I oppose and the positions I support in a manner that avoids the danger of “virtuoso theology”—in which the contribution of a dogmatics is measured by the creativity and rhetorical power of the author. The true theological virtuosos, such as Aquinas, lead us away from such misconceptions by means of ample quotations that instruct us in the sources of our faith and in important ongoing conversations marked by opposing perspectives.

Many thanks to Baker Academic for publishing the first three volumes of this series, and to Cascade for publishing this volume and any other volumes that God enables me to complete.