A Non-Systematic Theology

In the spring of 1997, my three year Master of Divinity degree was coming to a close. One of the requirements for graduation was to draft a “Statement of Faith,” which was my own version of a Systematic Theology. Simply put, Systematic Theology is an attempt to formulate an orderly, rational, and coherent account of the Christian faith. So my task was to take three years of theological and biblical studies and put together a “system” that explained the Christian faith as I understood it. So I, like the rest of my classmates, and the thousands of seminary students who went before me, and the thousands since, set down my system.

The hardest part of constructing a Systematic Theology, from my point of view, is determining where to begin. Beginnings often determine middles and ends, so I soon realized that where I chose to begin would determine the rest of the system. Some Systematic Theologies begin with God, others with human beings, others with something else. If I began my “system” with God, I would be saying something about human beings even before I discussed human beings. If I began with human beings, I would be saying something about God before discussing God. So to say one thing about one topic was to limit the freedom I had to say something about another topic.

I do not remember the well thought out and brilliant system I constructed. I probably decided to play it safe and, like many of my classmates, used one of the creeds as my guide. The part I remember was sitting in a room with two professors and defending my system as they exposed all the contradictions inherent within it and asked me questions on it.

The problems I have with Systematic Theology nearly twenty years later are variations of the problem I had with it then: There is no way to construct a system that works. I do not mean as in the cynical critique that Systematic Theology is trying to reduce God or theology to a formula, but that there is no way to construct a finite system that explains an infinite God without it being riddled with contradictions. My view then, and for the most part, my view now is that the finite can only describe the infinite in paradox and metaphor. Nothing I say about God is an accurate description of God, but rather it is a road sign pointing toward the direction of God; yet, it is a road sign that points in two different directions at once. I can only speak of God in paradox and metaphor -- just as apparently I can only speak of the paradox of God through metaphor. The danger for me is to take those metaphors for God and confuse them with God, fashioning my glimpse of God, my insight, my understanding of God, into an idol.

I obviously adequately constructed a system and defended it all those years ago because I graduated that May. Yet, I wonder if I would graduate today. what I wrote years ago was long and involved, taking up many pages. Yet, while mowing my lawn yesterday, and musing upon absurd things, past present and future, I stumbled up the "System" that I believe. If I were required to go through this exercise of writing out my Systematic Theology once more, I would not write so many pages of theological who knows what, but only write three words: God is love.

That is my Systematic Theology: God is love. Everything begins and ends with that idea. Every other theological concept that I may discuss has to be filtered through love. Wherever I proceed from this point, it cannot contradict the concept that God is love.

Actually, Jesus once said something similar when asked to state His Systematic Theology:

The lay-ministers heard that Jesus had bested the ordained clergy, so they encircled him. One of them was a lawyer and asked him a question in an attempt to test him. “Teacher,” he asked, “which commandment is the most important in Moses’ set of rules?”  
    
Jesus replied, “‘Love the Lord your God with every fiber of your being.’ That’s the most important instruction. The second important commandment is a lot like it: ‘Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.’ Everything in the entire Bible hangs on these two commandments.”

~As Matthew Tells It
The New Peace Treaty: A New Translation of the New Testament

Incidentally, “Love your neighbor as much as you love yourself” is the most quoted Old Testament verse in the New Testament. Of all the famous Old Testament passages that make it into the New Testament, the one that is quoted over and over again by Jesus, the Apostles, and those who knew the Apostles is Leviticus 19:18: “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

In Luke’s version of this story, a scholar (probably a seminary professor) follows up Jesus’ Systematic Theology with a follow up question: “Who is my neighbor?” which is essentially asking: “Who am I required to love?” Jesus answered with him by telling the parable of the Good Samaritan.

I already said that no system is perfect. It will have contradictions. There will be inconsistencies. The system of God is love will probably present inconsistencies as well. Yet, I do not think those inconsistencies stem from the system itself, as much as they stem from our unwillingness to commit to the system, or our desire to negotiate away the reality of love as we debate the meaning of love.

If God is love, then everything God does is an expression of love. This is the point where someone will jump in and demand to know how God killing a puppy or a child is an expression of love. My response is that I do not have to answer that, or cannot answer that, because I do not accept the premise. I do not believe God kills puppies or children. I do not believe that just because a thing happens it is God’s doing or will. God’s love gave us free will. God’s love keeps God from negating our free will. It is not that God cannot, but God won’t, violate free will. Puppies and children die because human being have used free will badly from the beginning, and continue to do so. So God does not violate our free will, but God deals with the consequences of our free will as an expression of love.

I can even see hell as an expression of God’s love. Hell is not a punishment created by God, but a possibility created out of love. There are people who do not want God in their lives. They are hostile toward God and refuse to accept a reality in which they live with God. God, out of love, gives them what they want -- a place with no God. Hell is not hell because God made it so to punish a sinful and rebellious humanity; God made a place for those who desire to live without God, and those people have made it hell.

Sometimes we have to give people what they think will make them happy, knowing that it will only make them more unhappy. But they will not accept that until they have experienced it. So, sometimes the most loving thing we can do for another person is to let them experience the consequences of their actions. That is what hell is: the consequences of a desire to live without God. What humans seem to do over and over again, is demand that God give us what we want, and them blame God when we get it, even though God had tried to talk us out of it all along. But very often, we do not understand the consequences until we experience the consequences.

It must be remembered, that love is not warm and fuzzy. Love, in my experience, is wild, unpredictable, thrilling and uncomfortable. It is scary, not because it is threatening, but because it exposes us -- it opens for another our soft, chewy center that we seek to hide beneath our jawbreaker exterior. And God is love, and because God is love, we are vulnerable, but so is God. If God is infinite and absolute, then God’s love is infinite and absolute; and if love exposes our vulnerabilities, then God is infinitely vulnerable. So as much as it may sometimes hurt to be us, the hurt God feels for us, and because of us, is infinite; yet, God continues to love -- God continues to expose His vulnerabilities to us and let us hurt Him.

We like to think that God is somehow void of pain, but God is love -- have you ever loved without being hurt? And that becomes part of the paradox -- we want a God who can relate to us and understand us and know how we feel; yet, we impose concepts onto God that keeps God “other” unable to experience what we experience, unable to know how we feel. But the contradiction is our contradiction imposed upon the system, not a contradiction within the system itself.

When I was younger, I used to think that the more “spiritual” I became, the more I would become indifferent to pain and bad things. I thought that the more spiritual I was, the less I would feel -- good and bad would become less extreme, and I would find an existence where I really did not feel extremes, especially negative or bad extremes. Then I realized that this is not being “spiritual,” it is being drugged. What I have found is that the more spiritual I become, the more I feel, and not only do I feel my own feelings, but I feel the feelings of others as well. Being spiritual is being more connected to others. Being spiritual is feeling what others feel as well as feeling what I feel -- and a lot of us feel hurt a lot of the time.

Digressions aside, the simple point is that my theology is that God is love. My theology is as “systematic” or unsystematic as love is. I will not claim that my system is rational because love is not rational. I will not claim that my theology is logical because love is not logical. I will not claim that anything I say about God is orderly or coherent because love is neither orderly, nor is it coherent. Love is wild and passionate and dangerous and self-sacrificing, giving of itself, knowing it may get nothing in return. That is God.

God is love, and those who abide in love -- those who abide in wild, dangerous, passionate, self-giving, self-sacrifice, seeking nothing in return �"- abide in God, and God abides in them.